Made a silly mistake....

ddoris

Take it back as soon as poss. I just returned a b-grade product to maplin on monday -they were ok to deal with phone/shop.

almillar

OP - you'll never get another OS installed on this, your best option is to take it back into a store hopefully for a refund as 'not fit for purpose'. If they need a demostration, try loading a Youtube video on it. (Does it say it has 'Flash' on it?). Bet it won't work. It says it's ideal for surfing, I'd call YouTube surfing, and it won't work, so it's definately not fit for purpose. You can pick up a desktop that's much more powerful for £50. A new netbook computer with a 12 month warranty for £80 isn't possible I'm afraid.

Fifer

First, get your money back. The Maplin return policy should make this easy but if not, the Sale of goods Act is behind you on the 'not fit for purpose' basis.

If you don't want second hand, can he or you stretch to £106.97 for a refurbished netbook with a 3 month warranty (extendable to a year)? I use a similar Eee PC netbook to this and it's fine (this one's better than mine as it has an 80GB hard disk). It runs linux and is very, very easy to use. They were originally designed for children and come with lots of great educational software as well as an office suite and internet browser. It's wireless too.

(I'm sure I've bought a couple of laptops from Laptops Direct before and they were fine, but someone here will know if they've been a problem supplier).

david39

Laptops Direct are fine. I've bought from their sister company (TVs Direct) and several other people I know have bought from them.
We live about 10 miles from them, so their quite local to us and have been in business for more than a decade.

-TangleFoot-

mamazaac wrote: »

On this subject, is linux in general any good? We steered clear of this when looking for a netbook for my son as neither of us know anything about it. Is it cheaper than windows because it isn't very good, or just because it doesn't have the brand name that windows does?

It's... complicated.

gaming_guy

mamazaac wrote: »

On this subject, is linux in general any good? We steered clear of this when looking for a netbook for my son as neither of us know anything about it. Is it cheaper than windows because it isn't very good, or just because it doesn't have the brand name that windows does?

I'm an ex-windows user who made the switch from Windows XP to Ubuntu. I wouldn't want to switch back to windows (as my primary OS) now as my machine runs so much faster and you don't need to worry about malware/viruses/trojans etc as most stuff is targeted at windows and won't run on Unix based systems.

I still have a windows install on this machine, but i only use it for when programs don't run reliably under WINE (no, not the drink!)

Owain_Moneysaver

Installing Linux can be complicated, installing it on non-standard hardware with limited documentation can be very complicated. And it's certainly possible to put the hardware into a state it won't work again without a reinstall of manufacturer's original software - which might not be available.

I've been happy with LaptopsDirect as a supplier. That refurb Asus EEE looks fine, and if XP is a bit creaky it will run various versions of Linux happily. More to the point it is a widely used and widely supported machine.

gaming_guy

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Installing Linux can be complicated,

Its about as difficult as installing Windows 7 on a standard PC.


If you can install windows 7 from scratch, then something like Ubuntu is just as easy to install. It will even resize the partitions for you so you can dual boot windows.

[Deleted User]

That's assuming that everything works. It doesn't always. In particular, hibernate and standby often do not work on Linux without a lot of extra effort (at least, they have never worked for me straight away and I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers).

Besides, this is not a standard PC, so I think it is reasonable to assume that a lot of things will not work straight away! Many other Linux distributions are also not as good as Ubuntu at working without any effort.

mamazaac

Thank you everybody. I think I am going to try to take back the maplin one and will probably go for the laptops direct one.

Not sure what OS is on this though as on the main features page it says linux, but on the tech specs tab XP.

There seems to be mixed reviews about installing linux and how easy it is, but if it turns out that this already does have linux, is it a good system to use? My son is concerned because when he visited youtube the other day it said that pretty soon he wouldn't be able to use IE6 and he would need to change to IE8 or firefox. The above pc at laptops direct doesn't say what browser is installed (presumably there is one?). He's not sure whether he can download IE8 to a linux system and apparently firefox is not usable on certain other sites he already uses (as he's tried to access them from his Grandad's pc using firefox). So I guess what I really need to know is whether linux will limit him on downloading certain applications?

Sorry to ask another question but don't want to buy a linux one if is going to lead to even more problems. Hopefully, this should be my last question and can then get this sorted out.