New Computer advice please!!

tinateaspoon

Help – computer ludite here desperately needing to upgrade my ancient old computer for a laptop, but know nothing – I only hit the buttons!

Dell seem to be offering an Inspiron 1501 for £299 – but trying to understand the spec, I just glaze over! Bear in mind my current computer (Windows 98), 19.1 GB (from what I can make out), Pentium 11 and 288.OMG Ram and only 4.96 GB used (& have had for several years).

Would like to view the odd DVD on it (someone said avoid the wide screens – how wide?), download photos from digi camera, put a few tracts on the MP3 (not go into downloading music yet), e mail – not very much really.

And if this Inspiron is any good – where do I start in trying to load all the programs\stored info, its mind boggling. Has anyone got a “simple” step by step guide?

krishna

You'll probably find anything fine.If you want to play DVDs on it and are going to be watching with anyone else, just note that TFT screens are a little different from the traditional ones, so cheaper ones tend to have a smaller viewing angle. i.e. when you move to the left or right the image gets a bit darker and less clear. So if that is important to you, it appears they have an option for a "Truelife" screen for an extra £20-30 and you may find that useful. No personal experience of this machine though.

As for loading software, do you have installation CDs for the software you want to use? If not, what do you want to install? It may be there would be free alternatives you can download.

And transferring data. Does your old machine have a USB port? If so that might be the easiest way, through a USB memory key - acts like a high capacity floppy disk. If not, do you have a CD writer on the old PC?

Zagu

It'll probably come with the operating system, Windows, installed, so its up to you what you want to load onto it. Installing programs is fairly straight forward, as long as you can find the original CDs!

Dell are great for novice users, but I cant find the Inspiron 1501 for £299 on thier site. The one thing, I think, that you will have to make sure you do is make recovery discs. Its easy to do with a few blank CDs, and after that you can load the programs that you want.

I presume that you have photos and MP3s on your current PC. You do need to copy these and then carry over to the new PC. There are several ways of doing this, but as you can (probably) have both PCs running at the same time, it should be easy. Id invest in a USB memory stick. They are quite cheap (£15-£25ish) and you can copy all your old files from one to the other. You could also use it to back up any files after the new PC is up and running, so it wouldnt be redundant.

The files Id back up are your email in and out box, contacts, your calender if you use it, favorites, and any music and photos, as well as anything else that you havent got on the original CDs. It takes a while to do it all, but is fairly easy, especially if you can hang on to your old PC for a bit.

BillScarab

One quick question, do you really need a Laptop? Desktops often work out cheaper and are much easier to upgrade and fix in the future. If the laptop is going to end up sat in the same place all the time I would seriously think about a desktop machine instead.

Why were you advised to avoid widescreens? If your planning on watching DVDs on it a widescreen would be a good idea.

tinateaspoon

Yes, I know laptops are more exy - but I want to sit in the conservatory with it!!!! - and we don't have a TV, so a DVD (moving pictures!) is so exciting for us!

Blacksheep1979

I hate to say it but you're going to be far better off spending a bit more on it - £300 for a laptop is going to have you in here all the time with questions along the line - why is my computer so slow? Why do dvd's judder? etc etc.

Moneymaker

How about a second-hand Apple Mac? I bought a couple of iBooks (manf. 2000) via eBay a few years ago and they've been very reliable.

GoofyGAT

The cheapest Inspiron 1501 I could find on the Dell site is £349: click here - it's not a bad spec at all.

For £299 it's a steal I reckon. But that's not the point, is it? It's not 'how much' you spend on something, but 'how well' it's going to serve you for the purpose it's meant for that's more important, isn't it? For tinateaspoon's needs (& computing history) the Inspiron 1501 ticks all the right boxes for me, & then some. A friend has had a laptop with 'half' the spec for a couple of years - his usage is similar to tinateaspoon's. He won't be buying a more powerful laptop for at least 2-3 years, maybe more.

If, on the other hand, s/he is going to use the laptop for many new & demanding things over the coming months/years, I have to agree with the suggestions about getting something better.

Moneymaker's idea about the second-hand Apple Mac fits in with my initial thoughts (though, personally, that would be my last resort ). G