Blagging A relatively low spec laptop..

mathsstudent

If you're at the point where you're installing linux, then i guess i don't need to tell you, but for anyone else getting a computer 2nd hand, it's always best to completely wipe the hard drive defore you start using it - you never know what little surprises may be lurking...

snipeor

I know, Heres my predicament. I have 3 hard drives one external and the first two internal ones are near enough full are full. The external one is mine to do as I please with however its already got my entire music collection on it and juggling all the files and what not back to my other hard drives would be a pain, however im considering it...

As for anyone who asked im planning to go into the science (possibly research or conservation) field and stay on at school to study the three science's at A level however programming would be a usefull skill especially with how computers are used so much by scientists these days to simulate and help test certain theories. Im trying to learn C++ as it seems the most widely used language.

Thanks for all the tips so far, I think the car boot idea is the best idea since theres one at my local market and Ive already put a wanted add on my towns freecycle group.

f1re_cr4cker

what about trying to get one off the carphone warehouse etc with a mobile phone?

shewhoguards

Somewhere else you might check - try the adverts notice board in your local supermarket. People often use those to sell on PCs cheaply.

mrs.way

fickle34 wrote: »

do you have a branch of CEX near where you live? IF you've got any dvd's/games and stuff that you don't use anymore you could either trade them for cash, or if you had enough stuff to exchange you could see if they had a decent 3nd hand laptop in. Other than that, all but one piece of advice you've been given is ace and ebay's always a great place for looking.

One other idea, and apologies if anyone above has said this but i'm looking after 3 hyper boys at the moment and i've not had time to read every reply, is don't some mobile companys do packages now where you can get a broadband stick and a laptop off them for a monthly fee?

Hope you manage to get what you're looking for anyway, and sorry you had to get at least one insensitive and unhelpful reply!

All the best!

t mobile do i think!

lorweld

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lumpy_bum

i meant to quote not thank the paper round comment

just to echo what others have said
freecycle is good
we got some for our kids from partners work
fingers crossed for u

[Deleted User]

You don't really need to use Linux to program C++, there's free compilers and IDEs for Windows available. You don't even need to allocate a lot of space, maybe 150MB as source files don't occupy that much space at all. Could you not add another hard drive to the existing machine, you wouldn't need a large one so you could get away with a cheap 40GB drive and dualboot if need be.

macman

Re suggestions to get free lappy by signing up to a 2 year mobile contract, that is really not a good idea and at 16 you can't do this anyway in your own name.

snipeor

Thanks everyone for all the help, although I am still looking for a laptop in the future I decided to try out linux on my other internal hardrive. It involved getting rid of half my games but I hardly play them anymore anyway and can allways reinstall.

As for programming, although I find the way linux handles things completely differently to windows fairly refreshing. I found that for a begginer the support is better on windows, especially for IDE's which are much more complicated than DEV-C++ that I use on windows.