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

only_mee

gohan2091 wrote: »

I want to keep my Virgin Broadband and THREE 3G connection separate using the same router... is this possible?

No.
Why don't you want to use the wireless connection from your Virgin Broadband?

gohan2091

only_mee wrote: »

No.
Why don't you want to use the wireless connection from your Virgin Broadband?

Because it's only 10MB and I do a lot of downloading, which slows down the connection for others. I have a years free broadband service... may as well use it.

andyfrank

gohan2091 wrote: »

Because it's only 10MB and I do a lot of downloading, which slows down the connection for others. I have a years free broadband service... may as well use it.

just put your downloads on over night when no one else using the pc's my brother in law has a 10mg d/l speed and has 5 pcs connected and xbox live , surfing is ok but the minute he downloads all his pcs go mega slow and the xbox live freezes ,

gohan2091

andyfrank wrote: »

just put your downloads on over night when no one else using the pc's my brother in law has a 10mg d/l speed and has 5 pcs connected and xbox live , surfing is ok but the minute he downloads all his pcs go mega slow and the xbox live freezes ,

I have a lot to download, a few nights is not enough time. Anyway this is not the point, I have free Internet for a year, why not use it?

outofmoney

gohan2091 wrote: »

Because it's only 10MB and I do a lot of downloading, which slows down the connection for others. I have a years free broadband service... may as well use it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this supposed to be for the use of your child(ren)?

andyfrank

gohan2091 wrote: »

I have a lot to download, a few nights is not enough time. Anyway this is not the point, I have free Internet for a year, why not use it?

lol must be pretty big downloads then ;-) think i know what ur saying , u may need to find a site that offers faster downloads ;-) the 3 dongle does only work in certain areas , and the coverage is better in some areas than others , i know from past experience that surfing on a mobile dongle is way slow compaired to being on a wired connection or wireless router , but some people who have no experience in pcs wouldnt really notice the diffrence in how long it takes to surf as its all new to them , im also told that downloading is virtually impossible with a mobile broadband dongle there is a site you can go to to check the coverage in your area with a 3 dongle

gohan2091

outofmoney wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't this supposed to be for the use of your child(ren)?

You are correct but I am talking about my own connection with my own PC. I don't want the laptop connection to be slowed to a crawl because I am downloading huge files on my PC. It will slow to a crawl if the laptop used my Virgin Broadband connection, hence why I want to get this 3 mobile broadband sorted out. At 0.3MB though, it is awful and signal strength is 1 bar.

gohan2091

This laptop is mainly for my mum and two sisters and I want to get it set up an secure but i'm facing several problems:

- Unusable 3 Mobile Connection
- Installing Avira Anti-virus gives me an error with Windows Installer
- Cannot update Windows through Windows Update, installation always fails
- Sister cannot access various websites due to them being blocked
- Cannot add or remove Windows Components and Services, always gives me an error (I want to add default Windows games for my sister which is currently disabled)

I uninstalled NetIntelligence and that solved the issue with the blocked websites, but the other problems are still there. It seems either Windows is corrupt (very unlikely, it's pretty much default) or some software installed is interferring.

I know someone here says formatting the hard drive and using an official Windows 7 64bit disc with the Windows 7 product key from the laptop won't work but I wanted to try anyway, on a separate partition. I used a program that obtains the product key from the registry and I wrote that down (key is not shown on the sticker!) I am now having additional problems. It says "the product key you entered will not work with this edition of windows 7" oh well

EDIT: Problems have been sorted now, I did a full restore and everything I am telling Windows to do is working. One question though, is there a way to tell Windows to use 64bit mode? The cpu installed is a 64bit processor.

purple_cat_2

gohan2091 wrote: »

I find it disturbing that they included Windows 7 on a low powered netbook/laptop with only 1GB of RAM, that's going to be very sluggish.

Positive IT offers the Samsung laptop with an extra free GB of RAM which is good but in my opinion, the Toshiba is the best laptop due to the ATI 3200 onboard graphics chip... I believe it supports Direct X 10 which will give a slight performance boost in games that may struggle to run and could possibly help with video playback. The GMA 4500 on the other devices is a very poor graphics chip.

So maybe it's a good idea for me to select the Toshiba and buy a 2nd hand RAM stick on eBay? How difficult is it to open a laptop and slot the RAM in compared with a PC?

not sure if this has been answered yet but, it is very very easy to upgrade the ram. They are charging £50 on some sites for the upgrade but a stick of ram brand new will only cost half that. on the toshiba it is just one screw you need to remove underneath to access the ram, it is so easy. Toshiba is by far the best laptop available. it even has a hdmi output so you can connect it up to a hd tv (if ur lucky enough to have one) and watch movies slideshows presentations etc on ur tv.

gohan2091- which laptop do you have?? think I'm right in thinking the 64bit will need more ram

gohan2091

purple_cat wrote: »

not sure if this has been answered yet but, it is very very easy to upgrade the ram. They are charging £50 on some sites for the upgrade but a stick of ram brand new will only cost half that. on the toshiba it is just one screw you need to remove underneath to access the ram, it is so easy. Toshiba is by far the best laptop available. it even has a hdmi output so you can connect it up to a hd tv (if ur lucky enough to have one) and watch movies slideshows presentations etc on ur tv.

gohan2091- which laptop do you have?? think I'm right in thinking the 64bit will need more ram

I thought the Toshiba laptop was the best because of it's superior ATI graphics chip but I now think the Samsung laptop is better. The Samsung laptop has a dual core cpu (where as the Toshiba has a single core) and because I ordered from Positive IT, they gave me an extra GB of RAM free (so I have 2GB for the price of 1GB). The cpu is also 64bit, however, Windows 7 that's installed is 32bit.. (why?!)

I did install a retail version of Windows 7 on a separate partition and this was 64bit as standard but the OEM key from the laptop is not compatiable with a retail version of 7 (says it's the wrong version of Windows 7)