Thetownend.com

Sorry to start a new thread as I know theres a couple floating about but some of the terminology/features of those machines are alien to me so to avoid confusion (on my part) I thought I'd start a new one.  :oops:

I basically want to get a laptop for personal use but my requirements are pretty minimal as don't need anything too complex.  Need it obviously to be internet accessible - wireless, have MS Office packages ideally, be able to use music download programs on it (limewire type thing) and basically have the storage capacity to store tonnes of photos and a bit of music.

I have no idea what kind of memory I would need but I want to ensure it doesnt slow the pc down as I do have thousands of pictures to put on.

I don't really want to spend much and I don't want a Mac book or Vista really.

Any ideas/brands to avoid etc.?

(Again sorry for the duplicate threads)

most new laptops will (probably) have vista installed. you may be able to get rid of it and put XP on but i had problems on my laptop with regards to that.

honestly, i'd just get used to vista...you'll end up using it eventually.

i'll let others make recommendations but it might be worth buying an external hard drive, they're cheap, portable and easy to use.

What's your budget?

Most laptops probably won't come with Office on, so you may have to reduce your budget a bit to get that. Or just use OpenOffice, its the same thing and free.

That's a very good point Nemo. Office home and student will set you back £70 so it's worth considering.

I've spied this laptop from ebuyer, seems a bargain.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139121

I got one of those lappys for my next door neighbour and was very unimpressed with it TBH its slow and cumbersome and the switch on the wifi adapter is very loose and easily turnoffable (is that a word?) but tbh most laptops on vista can be improved with the addition of £15 of memory to speed them along as Vista is pathetic unless it has a minimum of 2gb.....as that lappy does that Si found.

As for office and limewire, I have legal versions of these if you need them just PM me when you get the lappy and if you prefer XP then that too can be added to the list and installed...but it will invalidate any warranties supplied with the laptop.

You can get a nice laptop for easily under £330 inc delivery and VAT just about anywhere now, they are pretty much a much or a muchness! yes even Dells now!

I got my HP6720 Laptop free when I signed up to a new 12 month contract with O2!

There you go, nothing like a real life heads up :)

I looked at similar ones with Dell and it would cost about £380, just for reference. I really hate Dell though.

As you well know Si....I totally agree with you!

And to be honest the only reason I said not that one is because I know its got a slow chipset...otherwise I would agree totally.

Yeah, it isn't the greatest. It would be helpful to know budgets though. I think the main issue is voiding the warranty with any cost effective upgrades/spec changes at the outset  :(

Cheers guys, sorry been in training all day with the last 4 hours in taxation training - suicidal.

Cheers for the heads up and JJedmunds - thanks for that you're a star re XP and limewire.  A pint or few if you ever venture to merlin!

Budget to be honest would ideally be 350 and under simply cause i've seen loads around and can't see why I'd need to pay more.  (Unless I bought MS office etc.)

If Im completely honest I dont really know much about how wireless works - whether its a monthly payment or a one off payment.

I saw that 80GB of memory would give me space for around 50,000+ photos and plenty of mp3's and those laptops were arounf the prices you guys mentioned.

Lady - for wireless to work you need 2 things:

* A wireless adapter for the computer
* A wireless modem router

The router is basically a standard modem - it plugs into your telphone socket as per normal but instead of plugging your computer into that, it sends a wireless signal out.

The wireless adapter picks up this signal and so you can access the internet as normal.

In other words there are no monthly fees, your broadband functions as it always has. You will have to buy a router though and this will cost about £50

You are very welcome Lady, anytime at all.

this is my laptop which is fine for doing all the stuff you require all I would suggest is buying a stick of 1gb extra ram as I have done for about £12, takes less than 1 minute to fit...just a cover removal and plug it in.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140189

*Unless it's Bushey Boys laptop and you try every cover apart from the one for the memory because it has a warning symbol for a laser on it  :D

Nah this ones got a picture of some ram on it so its easy to find :)

EDIT.

Actually it could be a picture of a small comb!

It'll be ok if the manual comes with it  :D

Rather than opening ANOTHER thread on laptops, I thought I'd just hijack this one.

Can someone that has a bit of knowledge about computers have a quick look at this one (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140708/show_product_overview) for me and let me know your thoughts.

My sister is looking to get a new laptop as she is starting uni in October.  She will just be using it for the basics - listening to music, watching DVD's, standard software apps etc.

I was thinking about getting the above and then just sticking something like this (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119282) in as well - I'm assuming that there's not really any difference between the different brands of RAM?

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Thats a perfectly good laptop for general use...it wont play hardly any games because of the poor graphics chip but if thats no concern then yeah its not a bad one at not a bad price, I use the cheaper HP 6720s which only cost £270inc vat and that is good for a cheapy by the same manufacturer and yes dont run Vista on a lappy with less than 2gig memory.

As for the memory, buy the best you can afford as there is a fair amount of difference speed wise between ram makes but for a general use laptop the cheap stuff is perfectly fine mate.

As for the memory actually buying it tho.....make sure you buy the matching speed memory if its a PC5300 667mhz or PC4200 533mhz ram fitted as standard as the spec does not specify this.

I have an HP Omni Book 6000 PIII 600mhz

it has 128mb SDRAM SODIMM- can i put another 256mb in there to work with it? and does it matter if the existing is 100mhz and the new 133?

The new Ram will run at the p100mhz speed and not at the p133mhz as it defaults to the lowest speed ram in the machine so yes shouldnt be a problem if you wish to run the ram at the faster p133mhz speed then remove the old p100mhz ram.

do you know if this will fit it?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SAMSUNG-256MB-SDRAM-SODIMM-PC133-256-MB-133-Mhz-144PIN_W0QQitemZ350071328586QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item350071328586&_trkparms=72%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14#ebayphotohosting

my laptop is not listed in the compatible models, but it seems to be what i need??? -256mb sdramm so dimm pc133, any reason why it woulnd't work??

thanks

It would appear that it would fit but the speed could be limited by your processor being able to handle p133 memory, there is more chance of it working if you buy 2 of those and discard the p100 memory you have already, then it may be a slight bios tweak to make sure it recognises the p133 memory.

In essence....it SHOULD be fine in the HP laptop as it is supposed to be compatibale with p133 memory but preferably not mix and matched with p100.

If they can cut down on the postage for buying 2 then for the sake of £2 more it has to be horth it mate.

Why on earth would anybody want a windows laptop/PC? they are WANK...

A mate of mine who is completely PC illiterate got through 3 rebuilds on PC in as many months simply because the windows system was not intuitive.

After the 4th time I convinced him to trade up to a macbook - he's had it 6 months and it runs as smoothly as a babies bum and he loves it because if he buys a camera or printer he just plugs it in and it just works - no software to install, no missing drivers and most importantly no virus's - oh and software updates are managed automatically.

Sorry Lady, why anyone would prefer a PC over a mac is beyond me, especially if you want it for surfing, photos or music (iphoto is the dogs bollocks - and the photobooks you can have printed off by mac are out of this world)

Just my opinion by the way..

PCs are for everybody; Macs are for people with too much money to waste who don't really know much about computers.

I am inclined to agree 100%.

And as for the eternal bollocks that Macs are better for graphical programs....utter tosh.

erm no, I disagree - PC's are for people who think PC's are the right choice because everybody else has got one - but show me one person who actually thinks PC's are reliable and a good investment?
 
I agree Macs are more expensive, but the extra cost is offset for me buy less hassle.

As for not knowing much about computers... I head up our companies european IT organisation and have to deal with these Piles of Crap everyday

Erm, me. I've had my PC for nearly three years now and haven't had a single reliability problem. Yes, it'll be out of date hardware wise soon, but so would a comparable Mac bought at the same time.
 


So does your company run on Windows or Mac OS?

ta, i think i'll get a couple but is there any reason that the hp omni book 6000 is not included in his compatability list? i can't afford for it not to work.

If you have any concerns the only way to be 100% certain is to either email HP themselves and ask for their own compatability list or to buy P100 ram of 256mb which will be very very slightly slower but will be 100% compatible.

Windows of course because we are caught in the trap of having infrastructure built around it. The costy of reinvestment is too high - if we were starting from scratch then Mac it would be...

I have been working on PC's building them, repairing them and supporting them since the first 186x based PC's in 1984 and parts wise PC's are totally reliable, sortware wise they are totally reliable and if you have the correct driver for them then I have NEVER in 24 years ever had a problem installing anything on a PC.

My 4 PC's at home vary from one month old to 4 years old and I have never suffered any failure of parts/drivers on any of them ever.

The only problems I have with PC's seems to be based mostly on the fact that people are trying to install software on PC's that do not meet minimum spec for the job (which is the same on macs too I might add) and that people get virused/spyware on them (again which is not sytem specific) this accounts with 90% of my PC repairs in the last 3 years.

I disagree totally with that statement you have made about less hassle as it is just not true.

And a good investment? yes totally...I built my current home PC for under £600 and it will run every game available in the next 2 years without any hassle and even if it does slow down in 2 years the parts for PC's are so cheap as to make replacement a totally cheap and viable proposition.

And yes I do have years of experience with macs as well as PC's.

thanks for your help, jjedmunds, for ease i went for 128mb pc100, which i know will definitely work.

So i guess it comes down to whether it's user friendly and intuitive for the non-teccy type.

Mac - plug in hardware and it works

PC - plug in hardware, load software, get asked loads of unnecessary questions, choose where to find the driver, hope it works.

Viruses whilst not specifically system related are more windows focused.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that PC's a great if you are confident with what you are  doing - the trouble is most people aren't which is what keeps you and I in a job. Mac's are more intuative but people look at the cost and think they are not really what they need cos everyone else has PC's

So maybe if Samdy's comment read:
PCs are for everybody who is confident with PC's; Macs are for people who don't really know much about computers and want things to just work when they plug them in.

Which in Macs case probably accounts for 80% of the countries PC users...

I would agree

This thread is like an episode of the IT Crowd.

What boring?

Get a Mark Morrison CD

Return of the Cack?

God I can't stand that fucker.

As I can't seem to get wireless yet I'm going to get my mate to burn me some programs, can you think of anything essential other than this lot?

iTunes
codecs
AVG

Firefox

:D

Limewire.

bit torrent
azureus
msn messenger
online poker

all a bit useless to me