Free Computer & Internet Access for Children aged 7-14 of Low Income Families

Orville

only_mee wrote: »

Seems the prices have shot up as the scheme as ended which is very wrong imho.

Isn't it always the way To be honest even though i am grateful for the grant, if you search around you can get much higher spec laptops for the same price. I would have thought the goverment would have set a much higher standard for the companies to abide by when specking the laptops.

Orville

Just thought i would say that Positive IT Solutions have been exceptional. Ordered the laptop on Sunday and it's arrived today...!!

tls1974

My sister has been awarded the home access grant and I've been looking at the laptops that are available under the scheme for her as she's not clued up on computers.

I have to say I'm absolutely disgusted at what's on offer. The technical spec of these machines is abysmal. It's almost like the suppliers are simply cobbling together their oldest components to produce machines of such low spec that they would never sell on the open market and slapping a hugely inflated price tag on them. These machines are obsolete now and certainly won't be able to cope with more sophisticated software which will be 'normal' in a couple of years time!

Why on earth didn't the government simply define a minimum spec that the machine had to meet and allow the recipients of the HA grant to buy any machine which meets/exceeds this from certain suppliers? So much easier and the machines would have some longevity.

Orville

OMG i have done a really dumb thing. I started the laptop up and it came with an error, one of the programs wasn't working. I stuck the recovery cd in and without thinking started it, but it's windows XP..!!.

Is there any way i can get the origional software back on as now it's XP without office....

tls1974

You can get a laptop with 2GB RAM from Positive IT:

http://www.homeaccessgrant.com/index.php?option=com_ixxocart&Itemid=55&p=product&id=4&parent=5&vid=0

This one seems to be the best of a bad bunch IMHO. :-)

tls1974

ORVILLE: Did you go through the whole recovery process or just boot from the recovery disk? If it was the whole process, then you're probably stuck with it.

Do you not have a Windows 7 recovery disk from the supplier? If yes, use that. If not, best thing to do is contact the supplier you got it from, explain what's happened and ask them to send you out the full recovery disk which they should have supplied in the first place! :-)

Marv02

tls1974 wrote: »

My sister has been awarded the home access grant and I've been looking at the laptops that are available under the scheme for her as she's not clued up on computers.

I have to say I'm absolutely disgusted at what's on offer. The technical spec of these machines is abysmal. It's almost like the suppliers are simply cobbling together their oldest components to produce machines of such low spec that they would never sell on the open market and slapping a hugely inflated price tag on them. These machines are obsolete now and certainly won't be able to cope with more sophisticated software which will be 'normal' in a couple of years time!

Why on earth didn't the government simply define a minimum spec that the machine had to meet and allow the recipients of the HA grant to buy any machine which meets/exceeds this from certain suppliers? So much easier and the machines would have some longevity.

If you want a personal opinion on how this system works, here it goes.

1) The government starts up the scheme. 270,000x£400 = 110 million pounds of the great tax payers money.

2) They get together as many retailers (under their wing most probably) and tell them to build machines of the lowest spec possible they could find. And from a personal experience, I would like to think, what they call the highest spec laptop, wouldn't have costs them no more then £150. (I mean, a Celeron CPU... Seriously? PC World have i3 laptops @ £399.)

3) Then they tell these very selective retailers to slap a price tag of £400 on them, and in return would get lets say... £50 on each system. (that’s a lot when you times that by 270,000.)

4) Each laptop, for the government wouldn't have cost them £200, including all retail profits etc. Which means a sweet £200 is left over per sale. And what happens when we times £200 by 270,000? 54 million pounds is what happens.

Simples.

Marv02

tls1974 wrote: »

..

I got a question for you. Wouldn't it be the wiser option to go with the AMD CPU'd laptop, then upgrade the CPU? The only reason I say that is, the single core AMD laptop comes with the ATI HD3200 which is rated a lot higher then the Intel chip.

Any ideas if you can help me find motherboard specs for the Toshiba?

Orville

tls1974 wrote: »

ORVILLE: Did you go through the whole recovery process or just boot from the recovery disk? If it was the whole process, then you're probably stuck with it.

Do you not have a Windows 7 recovery disk from the supplier? If yes, use that. If not, best thing to do is contact the supplier you got it from, explain what's happened and ask them to send you out the full recovery disk which they should have supplied in the first place! :-)

No, the only recovery disk is the xp one... I am so annoyed with myself more then anything, i should have sent the laptop back, but it seemed like such a hassle. I'll call them monday:D.

Orville

Marv02 wrote: »

I got a question for you. Wouldn't it be the wiser option to go with the AMD CPU'd laptop, then upgrade the CPU? The only reason I say that is, the single core AMD laptop comes with the ATI HD3200 which is rated a lot higher then the Intel chip.

Any ideas if you can help me find motherboard specs for the Toshiba?

Marv i have the toshiba one. I got it for the very reason you said the Graphics chip is far better. Positive IT are very quick in delivery, mine came on the Tuesday after placing the orderon the sunday. I shall try to find out the motherboard specs.

Well according to cpu z the model is NBWAE 1.00 whatever that means..:)