Really slow laptop

rose28454

My oh had a fairly old Dell laptop that worked well. However the graphics card went and our local tech guy said it would cost a lot to repair as it was part of the motherboard. As he cant afford to buy a new laptop at the mo the guy said he had a second hand one for sale for £100.00 and for an extra £20.00 he would transfer all hubbys photos etc. We wemt away on holdiday and left him to do it.
We picked it up a couple of weeks ago and have been very disappointed. Firstly there was no wireless card and after a lot of toing and froing he eventually took the wireless card from the old laptop and put it in the other.
Hubby and I live apart and when he uses it at home it is really really slow and so I thought it might be his broadband as he lives in a small village. However I swopped with him last night and I have a good broadband signal and is almost as bad here.
It is a Dell Latitude C840. Anyone got any ideas how we can speed it up. Lastly I actually wondered if we could ask him to take it back and give us a refund as I dont think it is fit for purpose.

Erme

Try linux on it...

http://www.distrowatch.com

If you just want to try linux out without installing it try a live cd of puppy linux or ubuntu

Personally pre mac days I was a pclinuxos fan but there's so many distros it's unreal...sure you'll find one that's suitable

All you need is a big pack of CDs/DVDs (blank) and something to burn them on

Should revive it

Erme
PS. Just looked at distrowatch. I'd try Lubuntu or Puppy on it first...E

Anthonis

Give this !!!! back for him, take money back and never come back to him.... Go on ebay there are plenty better deals than this old crap. Hate when people cheat like that.....

TakeThis

Anthonis wrote: »

Give this !!!! back for him, take money back and never come back to him.... Go on ebay there are plenty better deals than this old crap. Hate when people cheat like that.....

I was thinking of quite how I could write something similar. But the chances of him giving a refund....

Anthonis

Usually to get refund from such !!!!!!!s you have to smash that laptop on his head! Works 100% I am serious...

TakeThis

Don't be ridiculous. Those old laptops are solid. You could end up with a charge of manslaughter with diminished responsibility. Now if it were a newer laptop, just a mere concussion would result, so a much lesser charge. So be careful what you advise.

Dave_C_2

Read the sticky How to speed up a slow or infected PC

Several people on this forum have reported success and the inhabitants on here are only too keen to help.

Dave

TakeThis

Dave_C wrote: »

Read the sticky How to speed up a slow or infected PC

Several people on this forum have reported success and the inhabitants on here are only too keen to help.

Dave

What are you talking...? This laptop is not infected....it's just c^%p. Not easy to clean a t*rd.

Have you seen the thing?

Seriously though, perhaps if they max out the RAM, it might help a little. Together with a better Wireless Card. But it is not worth the spending of more money.

Anthonis

TakeThis wrote:

Don't be ridiculous. Those old laptops are solid. You could end up with a charge of manslaughter with diminished responsibility. Now if it were a newer laptop, just a mere concussion would result, so a much lesser charge. So be careful what you advise.

Well yeah, but at least that guy would be afraid to cheat people next time

Even upgrading this laptop wont help:D
On ebay are better deals than this one, and you can get something newer than this old crap....

TakeThis

Anthonis wrote: »

Well yeah, but at least that guy would be afraid to cheat people next time

Even upgrading this laptop wont help:D
On ebay are better deals than this one, and you can get something newer than this old crap....

Afraid? He would already be kaput!

Hammyman

rose28454 wrote: »

It is a Dell Latitude C840. Anyone got any ideas how we can speed it up. Lastly I actually wondered if we could ask him to take it back and give us a refund as I dont think it is fit for purpose.

OTTOMH its an early Pentium-4 doorstop. 1GB is going to be the max memory you can put in and memory for it will cost a fortune as it is DDR ram.

It should be reasonably speedy enough to use for email, web browsing and office type stuff but only once the memory is 1GB. Chances are it came with 512MB or even 256MB which is pretty unusable nowadays.

Takethis is right about the fact they're built like tanks. Anthonis doesn't know his arris from his elbow. Its a Pentium 4, not a Pentium 3 and my parents have a Pentium 4 desktop that runs Vista just dandy with 2GB in it.