second hand laptop

mrscb

OH is bringing a HP Pavillion laptop home tonight(thats all the info hes given me) Has the opportunity to buy it for £130.The person selling it is letting us try it before we buy.What should we look for (apart from the fact it starts up:rolleyes:)

John_Gray

All the things you would look for when buying a new laptop, plus the ones you would ask because of its age:

• How old?
• General condition?
• Any stuck pixels on the screen?
• How long does the battery last for before recharge is necessary?
• Do all the sockets work (USB, ethernet, etc)?
• What operating system?

You should install and run something like Belarc Advisor to find out what CPU chip is installed, how much real memory, how big the hard disk is, what software is there, and so on

No doubt there will be lots more suggestions. Basically, the main question is whether it does what you want and you think it is value for money.

[Deleted User]

mrscb wrote: »

What should we look for (apart from the fact it starts up:rolleyes:)

Apart from naked photos? :rotfl:

Lum

Deleted_User wrote: »

Apart from naked photos? :rotfl:

Confidential military or social services data that you could sell to the papers.

Seriously though, make sure the spec is suitable for whatever you want it to do and that the operating system is one you are happy with.

I would probably reformat and reinstall the OS upon receiving the laptop as a precaution and thus wouldn't be too bothered if the current OS is full of spyware and running badly.

£$&*"($£&(

The type of processor, the amount of RAM and the hard disk size to try and work out if it's worth £130.

[Deleted User]

I'd suggest downloading http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

It doesn't require installing; it's a simple 1 file executable. It'll report back what hardware the laptop has and as previously mentioned you can then work out if it fits your needs.

I'd agree with wiping and reinstalling Windows XP. This will save you a lot of hassle in months to come.

Finally install a decent anti-virus - Avira AntiVir - and ensure the PC is properly patched http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

mrscb

On it now.....
HP pavilion zv5000 running xp professional.It connected to my wireless connection straight away.
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64
64 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
60.00 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
41.84 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GWA-4080N [CD-ROM drive]

IC25N060ATMR04-0 [Hard drive] (60.01 GB) -- drive 0, s/n MRG31YKCJ4Z2GH, rev MO3OAD5A, SMART Status: Healthy
512 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'S1' has 256 MB
Slot 'S2' has 256 MB
[URL="file:///C:/Program%20Files/Belarc/Advisor/System/tmp/(N-c664245e54154).html#missing_hotfixes"]Microsoft Security Updates
[/URL][IMG]file:///C|/Program%20Files/Belarc/Advisor/System/local/images/sp_alert.gif[/IMG]



75 missing( whatever this means:o)

PNPSUKNET

Thats not bad for the price, if it will run what you need go for it

Donnie

Test the optical drive extensively. I remember there being a fair few problems with that particular drive.

MX5huggy

Donnie wrote: »

Test the optical drive extensively. I remember there being a fair few problems with that particular drive.

Not really a problem as and external one can be had for about £25.

I would look to upgrade the ram to 1GB or more either 2*512 (ebay the old) or swap 1 256 for a 1GB giving 1.25 and XP will fly along.

The other question is where is it from? in particular is it stolen?

Lum

MX5huggy wrote: »

Not really a problem as and external one can be had for about £25.

I would look to upgrade the ram to 1GB or more either 2*512 (ebay the old) or swap 1 256 for a 1GB giving 1.25 and XP will fly along.

I'd agree with this, also do you know if the internal drive uses a standard design (eg. Dells use standard slimline drives in a custom case so you can swap them for a cheapo generic drive. I did this to the free Dell Lattitude CPx I acquired, replaing the knackered 24x CD ROM with a slot loading dual layer DVD burner.

If you really don't want to spend any money then using nLite to make a suitably slimmed down copy of XP is another option if you're feeing brave.

The other question is where is it from? in particular is it stolen?

This is a bit of a concern too.