Which basic second hand laptop?

GunJack

If you look hard enough on fleabay, you CAN pick up a reasonable, working lappy....I recently picked up a packard Bell, 1.4GHz, 15.4" widescreen, wifi, 50GB hdd, 512Mb RAM, DVD-RW, XP home for £87 inc. delivery. Clean install, hoover out the fan and vents, and bingo - runs fine

You do really need to know what you're looking at, though, and often stuff advertised as spares & repairs may not need much doing to it to be completely serviceable...

candtalan

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?)

Now you are talking! I only use Ubuntu (which is a non Windows system, and is based on GNU/Linux). It is likely to run ok on your laptop, although there is something called RAM memory which helps if you have enough of it. There are ways to find out.

Because you don't have anything useful on the laptop just now, I guess it can just be wiped and given a fresh new installation? It is easy if you do not want to save your data from the old machine.

You loose nothing by trying Ubuntu, and if things work out it will run (probably) better than Windows XP on the laptop.

Ubuntu is free of cost and is free to use. The reasons why, are another story.

Basically you get a Ubuntu CD of a certain type (depending on your RAM.....) and then just install it.

I don't use Windows, but I am happy to help you with Ubuntu, by phone or other means if you wanted to have a go.

23n1th

candtalan wrote: »

.... Basically you get a Ubuntu CD of a certain type (depending on your RAM.....) and then just install it...

Is it not more to do with you processor?

Donnie

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

There probably no need to purchase anything. Though of course as you can imagine we would need more details about the laptop.

Make and full model number to begin. From there I can tell you the most suitable course of action, bearing in mind that you need to keep costs to a minmum.

gonzo127

busenbust wrote: »

^^£35 used .

hey busenbust, just incase you didnt notice the £35 used copy linked above is actually a dell OEM copy so not exactly legit for the transfer to another computer based on the license details



as lifted from microsoft

• What is the difference between OEM product and Full-Packaged Product (FPP)?

ANSWER. OEM products are intended to be preinstalled on hardware before the end user purchases the product. They are “shrink wrapped” and do not come in a box like the retail products do. Full-Packaged Product (FPP) is boxed with CD(s), manuals, and the EULA and is sold in retail stores in individual boxes. The End User License Agreements (commonly referred to as “EULAs”) for OEM and FPP products are slightly different. One main difference is that an OEM operating system license (such as the license for Windows) cannot be transferred from its original PC to another PC. However, the FPP version of Windows may be transferred to another PC as long as the EULA, manual and media (such as the backup CD) accompany the transfer to the other PC. Also, when a customer purchases an OEM product, the OEM license requires the OEM to provide support for the product.

candtalan

23n1th wrote: »

Is it not more to do with you processor?

Not really. Once you move away from the retail merry go round which suggests that when your machine slows down you have no choice but to buy a new one (!), moving towards towards something like Ubuntu you find that with sufficient RAM, an old and impossibly slow machine will work reliably, if a *bit* slowly, with the latest modern software.
If you can believe it, I use a pentium II 350MHz 385 MB RAM desktop installed with the latest Ubuntu 10.10 for file sharing downloads and other testing. It is slow, but for example, Firefox browser takes 15 seconds to start as a first time run after PC startup and 10 seconds subsequently. I would find it too slow to use as my *normal* office machine, but it is ok otherwise. I am currently using it to test out the remote control program called Team Viewer (worth looking at), which I recently became aware of. Free for non commercial use. My house is full of PCs which others have discarded as useless, in those cases, pentium III's, and they are all up and running and viable, and none as slow as my PII above.

RAM can be inexpensive for old PCs (ebay?), and it makes a *huge* difference. The processor just makes a difference.

busenbust

gonzo127 wrote: »

hey busenbust, just incase you didnt notice the £35 used copy linked above is actually a dell OEM copy so not exactly legit for the transfer to another computer based on the license details



as lifted from microsoft

• What is the difference between OEM product and Full-Packaged Product (FPP)?

ANSWER. OEM products are intended to be preinstalled on hardware before the end user purchases the product. They are “shrink wrapped” and do not come in a box like the retail products do. Full-Packaged Product (FPP) is boxed with CD(s), manuals, and the EULA and is sold in retail stores in individual boxes. The End User License Agreements (commonly referred to as “EULAs”) for OEM and FPP products are slightly different. One main difference is that an OEM operating system license (such as the license for Windows) cannot be transferred from its original PC to another PC. However, the FPP version of Windows may be transferred to another PC as long as the EULA, manual and media (such as the backup CD) accompany the transfer to the other PC. Also, when a customer purchases an OEM product, the OEM license requires the OEM to provide support for the product.

follow the new link then

esuhl

candtalan wrote: »

Basically you get a Ubuntu CD of a certain type (depending on your RAM.....) and then just install it.

23n1th wrote: »

Is it not more to do with you processor?

candtalan wrote: »

Not really... moving towards towards something like Ubuntu you find that with sufficient RAM, an old and impossibly slow machine will work reliably, if a *bit* slowly, with the latest modern software.

There are likely to be different versions of Ubuntu for different machine architectures/processors. Maybe one for the x86 architecture, one for 64-bit, one for Alpha machines... You need to get the right version or you won't be able to install the operating system.

There are also different variants of Ubuntu such as Kubuntu which uses the KDE desktop environment (instead of Ubuntu's Gnome), and Xubuntu which uses XFCE. XFCE is less bloated than KDE or Gnome, so would probably be a good option for computers that don't have much RAM.

Personally, I can't stand Ubuntu (although it does seem remarkably popular, so don't listen to me!) and I find it very bloated and over-complicated. There are distributions of GNU/Linux that will run much faster than Ubuntu. Maybe worth looking at some of the ones designed to be "lightweight": DSL (Damn Small Linux), Puppy, Slax, for example...