Which basic second hand laptop?

ClaireLR

Wonder if anyone can help me here.

My OH needs a laptop for studying on and I've been looking for a second hand one for him (on Ebay, not sure this is the best place). Anyway, he needs a basic laptop where he can get onto the internet and also save word documents, thats about all he'll be using it for really (no downloading).

Can anyone point me in the right direction of what I should be looking for in terms of make/model, laptop or netbook and anything else I should take into consideration please? Budget is max £75, but anything cheaper than that would be a bonus!

Thanks

xyz123

for £75, i doubt if you would get any half decent laptop. eBay is almost your only hope.

Having said that did you look on freecycle website?

busenbust

agree with xyz -- it's bloody tight!

full-stop

Dell C600 should do the job nicely and fit the bill, 14.1" screen /TFT.

Has the excellent Intel BX440 chipset.

Drawbacks are this laptop only has usb1.x and only 1 usb port. You will also need to buy a pcmcia wifi card (although it is possible to buy an add on card and place it in the laptop).

The max cpu on this model was a PIII 1Ghz so try to go with that. Also the max ram was also 512mb which will run XP fine.

If XP is correctly configured the laptop works a dream, boots to desktop in 85 secs or so ready to use.

I bought one new some 9 years ago which is now used by one of my children. Admittedly, I have had to rebuilt it several times over the years because it was dropped but the parts are readily available and reasonably cheap on fleebay.

Good Luck

gonzo127

as said ebay is probably your best hope for a laptop within that budget

things to note
do not get one of the 7inch windows ce laptops they really are an expensive doorstop
make sure it has wireless capability
make sure it includes a cable/charger otherwise it will be useless pretty quickly
if you can get one with a battery that holds charge thats the best however most in that price range will not hold charge for long expect less than one hour
do not worry if they do not include windows although of course for most people this will be the easiest option, bare in mind you can get a lot of operating systems for free based on Linux, the usualy suspects for a person to start with are the ubuntu family (with 4 main versions each with varying system requirements to suit what your needs - Ubuntu, Kubuntu, xubuntu and lubuntu)

esuhl

I picked up a second-hand Asus EEE 901 on eBay for £150. It's a netbook, so not the ideal size for a main study computer and not the fastest either. I use Linux on my main desktop PC, but the distro that came installed on the EEE was horrible, so I decided to install XP on it - that'd be another ~£60 if you don't have a retail XP licence.

I really don't think you'll be able to get a usable laptop for £75 (worth a look, of course!)

On the other hand, £75 might get you a cheap desktop PC (if you have a spare monitor or can beg/borrow/steal one). This PC on eBay is less than £50 delivered (although you might want to upgrade the RAM).

ClaireLR

esuhl wrote: »

I picked up a second-hand Asus EEE 901 on eBay for £150. It's a netbook, so not the ideal size for a main study computer and not the fastest either. I use Linux on my main desktop PC, but the distro that came installed on the EEE was horrible, so I decided to install XP on it - that'd be another ~£60 if you don't have a retail XP licence.

I really don't think you'll be able to get a usable laptop for £75 (worth a look, of course!)

On the other hand, £75 might get you a cheap desktop PC (if you have a spare monitor or can beg/borrow/steal one). This PC on eBay is less than £50 delivered (although you might want to upgrade the RAM).

Thanks. We really don't have the space for a desktop at the moment - we only have a one bedroom flat which is tiny and our first baby is due in 5 weeks hence the tight budget on the laptop!

Another question, totally different to the first, we do have a laptop that someone has put a non-genuine version of windows onto, and therefore now it won't work. How easy would it be to remove this from said laptop and install a new operating system (and how expensive would this likely to be?). Please can any answers be in the simplest terms as I'm really not the best person when it comes to understanding computers! Gonzo mentioned linux as an operating system, is this something that I could do easily?

Many thanks for the help so far

busenbust

ClaireLR wrote: »

Thanks. We really don't have the space for a desktop at the moment - we only have a one bedroom flat which is tiny and our first baby is due in 5 weeks hence the tight budget on the laptop!

Another question, totally different to the first, we do have a laptop that someone has put a non-genuine version of windows onto, and therefore now it won't work. How easy would it be to remove this from said laptop and install a new operating system (and how expensive would this likely to be?). Please can any answers be in the simplest terms as I'm really not the best person when it comes to understanding computers! Gonzo mentioned linux as an operating system, is this something that I could do easily?

Many thanks for the help so far

A new and legitimate Operating System (Windows 7, say) will over-write the previous -- make sure the laptop spec. can deal with win 7. I think XP can still be bought for retail?? And congrats on the baby!!

busenbust

XP:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Windows-XP-Professional-Service-Pack/dp/B00061H58I

busenbust

^^£35 used .

gonzo127

As above windows will set you back (new) ~£70 upwards

and although some people will poo poo the idea Linux it is usually very easy to install if you pick on of the newbie friendly versions, as i stated previously the usual suspects are based within the Ubuntu family are listed below (in order of system resources required)
Ubuntu
Kubuntu
Xubuntu
Lubuntu

another one to consider would be Linux Mint

all of these are totally free and installing them usually requires very little effort, just get a disk by either ordering one or downloading and burning it off yourself, then you change the order which your system boots from, pop the disk into your disk drive and follow the instructions

I personally would say if you can, to get/download everyone of the above operating systems (be careful of your internets bandwidth if you do download them) as they have a ‘try’ feature which will actually run the entire operating system from the CD and your systems RAM, ok it will not be that fast as it could be fully installed since it is having to read the CD all the time, but it does give you a feel for each operating system and allows you to play with them and check that all your hardware works perfectly before you install one