LAPTOP HELP thick question but I'm no techy

thecremeegg

in regard to running xp....my sisters pc is a 500mhz HP with 256Mb Ram and runs XP fine

ollyshaw

I would like to echo the openoffice suggestions, you need a REALLY REALLY good reason not to use this!

As for a new operating system, have you considered Ubuntu? Might be worth a look, https://www.ubuntu.com

Olly

Mizz_Pink

I understand that £400 is a lot of money, I dont have that amount of cash just to go out and buy a laptop but 18 months ago you had £400 to buy a laptop thats worth £100 max, plus the money you spent on a new battery and network card. Buying a second hand laptop is dead money.

The student laptops people gave you incorrect advice when they said it would be good enough for the next few years, it obviously hasnt been ?

You have already found £400+ to waste on a second hand machine.

If you can get some memory for £30 and get it fitted for free then fair enough, if your daughter is on her last yr at uni then go for it.

Donnie

The laptop is absolutely fine for your daughter's Uni work. My niece is using a similar machine with Windows ME. It has all the relevant Windows Updates, PCMCIA card card with 4 x USB 2.0 slots(£11), Bluetooth Adapter(£4), memory upgrade(£25)....Office 2000 Premium runs smoothly. No complaints thus far.
Agree with bypassing AOL software if possible.

Donnie

Mizz_Pink wrote:

I understand that £400 is a lot of money, I dont have that amount of cash just to go out and buy a laptop but 18 months ago you had £400 to buy a laptop thats worth £100 max, plus the money you spent on a new battery and network card. Buying a second hand laptop is dead money.

The student laptops people gave you incorrect advice when they said it would be good enough for the next few years, it obviously hasnt been ?

You have already found £400+ to waste on a second hand machine.

If you can get some memory for £30 and get it fitted for free then fair enough, if your daughter is on her last yr at uni then go for it.

Easy there Mizz_Pink. Hope that you aren't front-of-house in your husband's business. :eek:

cdbrown

TaBunny - can you post the link to the ram, at least a few people from here could check to see if it is the right module for the laptop or not. Would also recommend getting your daughter to have a look through the security, spam, etc threads so she can download the free software and rid the laptop of malware. Can you also ask her to check the free space available on the machine? As the free space reduces, so does the page file windows uses which can cause a slow down.

espresso

It sounds to me that the biggest mistake was to load the AOL software onto the machine. As previously stated, it is not necessary to use this bloatware when connecting as you are via a router.

Mizz_Pink

Donnie wrote:

Easy there Mizz_Pink. Hope that you aren't front-of-house in your husband's business. :eek:

I do work front of house and we hate to sit back and watch people waste their money, if we think their pc needs to be binned then thats the advice we give, if they take the advice or not thats up to them. I'm just trying to prevent this lady wasting anymore money on it, she is best to keep using it as it is and saving for a new one.

Anyway, how come her daughter cant contribute via a part time job/student loan ?

Donnie

Spending £25 to £50 on memory is hardly a waste. I wouldn't spend more than that though.

I don't think that it needs to be binned, as long as the components are working correctly.

In addition, I would recommend using the Opera browser when possible; http://www.opera.com/

gaming_guy

Donnie wrote:

Spending £25 to £50 on memory is hardly a waste. I wouldn't spend more than that though.

I don't think that it needs to be binned, as long as the components are working correctly.

In addition, I would recommend using the Opera browser when possible; http://www.opera.com/

you could also try firefox