The Breakroom > The Water Cooler
New Laptop Purchase Help
AdeV:
--- Quote from: Darren on January 09, 2010, 10:29:06 AM ---We wish to buy a new laptop for our daughter for coledge work.
I like and have bought from eBuyer in the past and found them great to deal with along with good prices.
Does anyone have any other good recommendations we should consider. Not really interested in the high street :thumbup:
--- End quote ---
You may have already bought - but, if not, I can thoroughly recommend eBuyer; delivery is almost always faster than promised, their returns process is basically painless & their prices are normally great. I've used them for lots of stuff over the last few years; ironically, the only exceptions being for Laptops (used to use RDC, but they've gone all expensive in recent times) and whole computers (fleaBay, but I know what I'm looking for).
ieezitin:
Hi Guys.
I here was my solution on slowing breaking down computers.
I own a Toshiba Satellite laptop got it in 2005. Its broken down three times and been repaired the same, then one day my buddy told me to stop using the laptop as a laptop!
First was the power plug that goes into the back, the internal part snapped. Then the hinge problem I had too. He told me after fixing it just leave it open on my desk and don’t take it anywhere.
My wife runs the horse boarding business we have and she uses the net all day long, I use the net all the time and spend aprox 3 hours a day on it. Plus we keep all our household business and farm business on computers. I purchased a HP system last January for my wife with a nice 17 inch wide screen, Windows Vista, super duper chip speed, HD graphics, DVD burner you name it this thing was awesome. One month later was slower than dogs Do-Do. So I called on my trusty mate to give me his advice and this was his solution.
First he said that since me and the wife use the computer all the time we should each have one. Then we need a house computer that Never Never goes on the net. so a total of three computers were needed. An external 500MB hard drive was needed so my and her machine could back up files to that incase of crashes. (The computer that never goes on the net never talks to this Hardrive).
Now he wiped clean my hard drive (laptop) and reinstalled the back up disk that came with the system, he then completely stripped all the hog wash that came as a bundle and just left me with XP and all the drivers ect, he even got rid of most of Microsoft office which was about a 200MB file. Then he immediately made a back up copy of my fresh reinstall so later when I go to flush it out its goes back to basics again.
He then installed a program called ( C C Cleaner Found on FileHippo.com ) This program is free and basically flushes out all crap with in about a minuet. Then we downloaded a program called Zonealarm which is just a free fire wall, they sell a virus program too but you need to pay for it. He did the same with my wife’s machine so both of us have bare bones machines. As you start to use it after about a month it shows signs of slowing down you purge the hard drives again which takes about 20 mins on mine and an hour on hers.
The beauty of this is we both run on the net wide open, no antivirus programs nothing, I don’t care if I get a virus, now since we both use the external hard drive I have access to a up to date antivirus program over the net at a university here and every now and then I check it to see if I have anything on it.
The firewall stops a lot of trash coming through as you use it and lets you see what’s going on, let me tell you my five year old laptop is lightning, boot up takes less than a minuet and that includes logging straight into my email account, with hers its doubled but I blame vista for that.
So what I am saying is before you throw out your old system give my set up a try, don’t rely on just one system, one clean computer in the house is the key because you don’t care what goes on the trashy net machines. I also make use of net storage systems, I even use my email service to store information I need for further reference, I just email myself with what ever stuff I need and file it on there systems.
Hopes this helps. Anthony.
Darren:
Some good ideas there Anthony ...
I dug out an old desktop 750mhz and not a lot of ram... but it's still working and I'm typing this post on it right now.
I have a few old HD's that I could use for cloning the laptops HD's ... it's a thought and be much easier than trying to do it on the laptop with a dead HD !!!
Just one thing, anyone know how to attach a sata drive to the desktops ide cable? (only way to use Ghost in DOS for cloning)
The other way would be to use the USB ports with a suitable cable (which I have) but this means doing the cloning in Windows with another program ... Acronis probably be my choice here ..
I did have one other thought. I always use the machines in admin mode. What if I made a normal acc instead and when windows slows down or becomes messy then just delete the acc, would that help?
AdeV:
--- Quote from: Darren on January 11, 2010, 04:24:07 PM ---Just one thing, anyone know how to attach a sata drive to the desktops ide cable? (only way to use Ghost in DOS for cloning)
--- End quote ---
Not possible I'm afraid: SATA (serial ATA) is not compatible with IDE (which stands for Integrated Drive Electronics; but basically means parallel ATA). If you can find a SATA PCI card for £cheap, you could fit it internally.
--- Quote ---The other way would be to use the USB ports with a suitable cable (which I have) but this means doing the cloning in Windows with another program ... Acronis probably be my choice here ..
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I'd probably go that route too - in fact, as soon as my replacement hard drive turns up, I plan to do exactly that to my main desktop...
Darren:
Is the recession over?
I say this because we have tried to buy our chosen laptop from 3 different vendors and still have yet to be successful ...
First one declined the online order because the value was too high .... WHAT !! Yep tis true. Helen phoned them up and they wanted a bank authorisation or sumut?
Second one we decided to phone the order in, err no go, well we could but there would be an extra unreasonable charge over online ordering ...
Third one, can't get the get them to answer the phone, so I'm guessing if there were any further problems after the goods have been delivered might raise ones blood pressure.
At this rate I can see us buying from the high street and being done with it
Recession, what recession ?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version