Laptops from £100 !

wolvesinwales

Pretty ancient models, all tested returns some without batteries but might be useful for somebody for something.

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/listings.php

rickw_y2k

The Dell Latitude C600 PIII 1Ghz Laptop, 256, 20, DVD/CDRW, NIC, 56K Modem, Floppy Drive, Win 2000 Lic for £237. Looks an alright deal

tjsmangina

could i use ANY of these to get online wirelessly ? basically i just need a laptop for my mum to get online around the house etc and thats it.

mew

rickw_y2k wrote:

The Dell Latitude C600 PIII 1Ghz Laptop, 256, 20, DVD/CDRW, NIC, 56K Modem, Floppy Drive, Win 2000 Lic for £237. Looks an alright deal

Surly it would be worth spending about £100 More on a Higher speced Refurbished Medion from the medionshop or a Brand New Dell.

scope

tjsmangina wrote:

could i use ANY of these to get online wirelessly ? basically i just need a laptop for my mum to get online around the house etc and thats it.

Dont see why not.. I've got a Dell 200mhz that works fine with my wireless card. Spec of machine shouldnt matter.

quidsinquentin

wolvesinwales wrote:

Pretty ancient models, all tested returns some without batteries but might be useful for somebody for something.

http://www.bigpockets.co.uk/listings.php

I need to do a lot of writing and my budget is £100ish (or less) - does anyone know if any of these models would be ok just for wordprocessing - on a big scale, say novel length? It wouldn't be used for anything else at all.

rsykes2000

Wordprocessing on a laptop can be a pain, as they keyboards aren't generally as good as 'proper' keyboards, especially older ones like those. I suppose with one of the above ones, they may possibly have a USB port to attach a real keyboard though. Personally if your budget is only 100 pounds, I think a low-spec PC would do you better than a 100 pounds laptop.

quidsinquentin

rsykes2000 wrote:

Wordprocessing on a laptop can be a pain, as they keyboards aren't generally as good as 'proper' keyboards, especially older ones like those. I suppose with one of the above ones, they may possibly have a USB port to attach a real keyboard though. Personally if your budget is only 100 pounds, I think a low-spec PC would do you better than a 100 pounds laptop.

Thanks for this - my problem is that it's got to be portable - to move round the house and poss. train as well as take up very little space. Good point about the keyboard though - I hadn't considered that.

chunter

Do you know Bigpockets actually charge more to send something to Northern Ireland than they do to East Germany ...

"Can we deliver to outside of the UK Mainland ?
YES. Bigpockets.co.uk now ship to the following International destinations .
France - Belgium - Italy - Germany - Sweden - Spain - Austria - Denmark - Finland - Netherlands - Portugal -Luxembourg - Northern Ireland & Republic of Ireland

Delivery Charges to Belgium - Germany - France - Luxembourg - Netherlands are £12.99 per 20kg

Delivery Charges to Isle of Wight - Isle of Man are:
£3.40+VAT for upto 1kg
£12.76+VAT for orders over 1kg

Delivery Charges to Northern Ireland are:
£3.40+VAT for upto 1kg
£12.76+VAT for orders over 1kg

Cheers, but I think Bigpocket can take a run & jump..
Poor, sad, effort by a very "unsavy" company

lucidamike

There's always ebay for 2nd hand laptops - although you have to hope the seller is honest with the condition.

I bought a Compaq PII laptop for £50 that works very well (added a PC card wireless card for networking) and even the battery works well (unusual on older laptops)

Big problem with laptops that get moved around a lot is that they tend to break and its then very hard/expensive to fix

tdodd

IMHO they would all be OK for word processing. Let's face it, WP is one of the least demanding applications for a PC/laptop. It's only got to be as fast as your typing. If any of these can't handle WP then I wonder what on earth they were good for in the first place. You'd not be able to run Win XP on the cheaper ones as the memory is far too low but the processor speed and even disk space would be OK although any with a 4GB hard drive would be pushing your luck for a lot of writing.

My spare laptop, used for wireless surfing and email from the bedroom, is an 8 year old PII 300 with a 4GB drive and 320MB RAM. I have installed WIndows XP Pro and Office 2003 and still have 1GB spare. It isn't super-quick but is fine for what I need it to do.

Of course, it was only designed to run Windows 98 and Office 97 so I am pushing my luck with the later bloatware but it still manages OK, thanks to the extra RAM (320MB instead of the 64MB original).

On the cheaper units you would be best running Windows 98 SE or Windows ME (I know a lot of people whinge about ME but I've never had a problem with it on various brands and types of machine).

BUT, given your tight budget you need to check on whether the machines come with an operating system at all, much less WP software, since none is mentioned and you would probably need to get a copy yourself. Also, most of these, especially the cheap ones, have no means of backing up data, so unless you have access to a network, or buy a CD(DVD)-writer or USB flash storage you are going to have no practical means to back up your work and if writing a novel you simply must have a means to back your work up. Hard disks do fail and mistakes happen. So budget for a backup solution as well. I don't regard floppy disks as a solution!