Information.... We need Laptop Information numbr 6....

[Father Ted]

Well allright, its just a bit of a take on the Prisoner which incidentally is being remade for airing next year - bound to be crap? Probably.Anyway - I want a lap top that does the follwoing:Runs XP (not fecking Vista)Has Wi FiHas a LANHas a DVD RW driveIsnt slow.Costs about £350Has a spell checker Been plugging away at various sites for a few days and really am lost with whats on offer - can anyone suggest a make / model?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

This is autoshite man, you'll be lucky to get a Commodore Vic20 from us lot. Well from me anyway.

[Ratdat]

How about this from ALDI?

 

Get something for your motor while you're there. Handy for old shitters without CD/MP3 capability.

[Father Ted]

Hey, I still have a C64 - some brillaint games. I got it out for James to play on, but he soon got bored waiting for Boggle to load and went back to his (my old) Sega Megadrive and Sonic the Squidgehog.I thought I would ask as someone is bound to be much more computer savvy than me and I dont want to go to PCRipOrfWorld as they will see me coming a mile off and flog me some end of life PC386 grot probably.

[VWPowered]

i got a sega saturn, very high tech, i like to keep up with the jones

[Father Ted]

i got a sega saturn, very high tech, i like to keep up with the jones

I had the X32 add on for the megadrive and the MegaCD - both died, yet the console just keeps on going and going and going. Still on the original one I bought in Currys for an arm and a leg in 1992 - wsheras he has fragged one PS2 and is now on number 2 That Aldi link looks good - I assume you have to plug in an external DVD/CD rom, but its nice and compact though.

[VWPowered]

have to admit my PS2 lasted about 5 years was the misses being heavy handed that killed it

[Guest]

Get something for your motor while you're there. Handy for old shitters without CD/MP3 capability.

I'd love one of these sorts of things but in AM flavour, sadly these things always seem to be FM. If anyone ever sees anything that would fulfill that desire without too much trouble, let me know!

[pogweasel]

My PS2 Has survived 7 years of abuse & neglect now, including the kids trying to put toast in it etc. Makes a bit of an odd noise but still works OK!Just been superceded by a Wii now so gathering dust on top of the cupboard.

[reallyloud]

I would have liked to have had a Vic 20, you know swap games, chat about stuff, learn basic and make friends. Unfortunately dad came home one xmas with a Texas Instruments TI99/4a, so I continued to climb trees and eat lego.

[Father Ted]

My PS2 Has survived 7 years of abuse & neglect now, including the kids trying to put toast in it etc. Makes a bit of an odd noise but still works OK!

 

Mini sausages and toast finished our video off. But the integrated DVD still works, so its still under the telly.

[Ratdat]

I would have liked to have had a Vic 20, you know swap games, chat about stuff, learn basic and make friends. Unfortunately dad came home one xmas with a Texas Instruments TI99/4a, so I continued to climb trees and eat lego.

Likewise, I got treated to a Dragon 64 for Christmas which was obsolete by Boxing Day. It had one game cartridge (Chess) which didn't work properly and I rapidly got bored of writing enourmous programs just to draw coloured circles on the screen. I never had another computer until 2000

[pogweasel]

We were always 'treated' to obselete tech as kids, e.g. Spectrum when everyone else was binning them, Master System when everyone else got a megadrive. The upside was getting them bundled with loads of games for little £, like the Amiga I had that came with about 1000 pirated games. Joy!Now that games machines aren't running off chip games, it's GR8 though for stingebag parents. I bought my lad a PSP for his birthday, I wouldn't have dreamed of it if I had to lob out £30 every time he wanted a game. Instead I promptly hacked it, bought some large capacity memory cards and downloaded all the ace games off the net. MARVELLOUS.

[r.welfare]

Check out the "Open Box specials" from http://www.misco.co.uk - I bought t'wife a Toshiba which was ex-demo (but still a full year's warranty - thankfully as it transpires as we got a Friday afternoon job but now fixed) and ticks all your boxes (like you I only wanted XP) for £260 delivered.

 

The stock changes a bit so I have no idea what's available as of today though. Stick to the big names and you should be OK mind. All I know is that it's 300x faster than our 3yr old Dell desktop.

 

Still got my PS2 so I can try and complete all the insane stunt bonuses on GTA3, only taken me 7 years thus far. Hopefully my brother will be able to repair his dead XBox360 (which apparently suffers from the "four rings of death", which sounds like an ailment related to a week of hot curry to me) so I can have it for Xmas and get cracking on this Guitar Hero nonsense.

 

I might still have a Commodore 64 (Press Play On Tape) and an Amiga 500 somewhere, but I forget where they are buried. Anyways, you can play a lot of C64 and Speccy games through online emulators these days - "Minder" and "Turbo Esprit" being particular favourites.

[r.welfare]

Try this: http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=332896&CatId=0

 

And ignore the "1 month" warranty - they never register 'em with the manufacturer so you get yer full year (or whatever it is) when you register it online yourself. Simple.

[Father Ted]

Yes, just spotted that one and it ticks all my boxes and pushes all my buttons too - rather irritatingly it offered me the buy now pay Sept 09 option, then it didnt So will have to bend one of the credit cards when I get home....But thank you - there you see - Autoshite, not only advice on shonky cars, but advice on cheap PC's too!

[r.welfare]

Good stuff. Dell used to be another option, but infuriatingly the "Vostro" (read: fancy name for boggo laptop) has a loss-leader than you can't change the spec on. Ones with XP are above budget.The Misco boys are pretty quick on dispatching the thing too. I never had any issue when I had to send the Tosh back (twice!) under warranty for repair due to it being an "open box" job either.Good to find someone else finds Vista an infuriating pile of rubbish as well. Thought it was just me being a grumpy old git. Bring back Windows 3.1!

[Ross_K]

Anyway - I want a lap top that does the follwoing:Runs XP (not fecking Vista)Has Wi FiHas a LANHas a DVD RW driveIsnt slow.Costs about £350Has a spell checker Been plugging away at various sites for a few days and really am lost with whats on offer - can anyone suggest a make / model?

Dell Vostro A860? £275+VATLinky: http://tinyurl.com/5trpdcMr Welfare is right in what he says about upgradeability, but pretty much any laptop in that price range is going to be limited to a bit of extra RAM or a bigger hard drive.The Toshiba Satellite L300 is another good cheap laptop but it only comes with Vista. It's no big deal to wipe it and bung on XP though - I can send you a CD if you want...

[carlo]

I find the main problem with Vista is people trying to run it on machines which just don't have the power or memory to handle it. As long as you run it on a dual core processor and at least 2GB RAM it runs very nicely, and is a stable platform. Some of its annoying little foibles can be tweaked or removed anyway. When Vista first came out last year a lot of manufacturers sold machines with only 512 MB memory - it's no wonder they ground to a halt. I run Vista and XP on my machine and you certainly get used to it after a while.

[Timewaster]

I've had a couple from these guys:

 

http://www.computerresale.co.uk/

 

They actually speak in english too! As opposed to nerd jargon - i'm not a racialist (sic).

 

Dunno if they deliver, I always visit the shop.

 

Incidently - the year that every other kid at school got a Spectrum for Xmas - I got an Atari400

Great computer but our local game shop sold 600000000000 spectrum games and 3 for the Atari

Takes me back to typing in pages and pages of data from a magazine just to find that my 3 hours of labour produced a blocky worm crossing the screen accompanied by a raspberry fart noise. What fun!

[Guest greenvanman]

Get something for your motor while you're there. Handy for old shitters without CD/MP3 capability.

I'd love one of these sorts of things but in AM flavour, sadly these things always seem to be FM. If anyone ever sees anything that would fulfill that desire without too much trouble, let me know!

Keep an eye on Aldi then, I got one of their cheapo Tevion CD/MP3/SD card/USB head units a while back (£40 IIRC) and that has AM radio. Top bit of kit, wouldn't be without it now.

[MrRegieRitmo]

Mr Welfare is right in what he says about upgradeability, but pretty much any laptop in that price range is going to be limited to a bit of extra RAM or a bigger hard drive.

What else would you want to do to it?My PC at home is down again after rebuilding it a couple of months ago when I had the big scare, lost everything but got it all back (I think) hence why I'm not on here much at the moment as have 0/2 working PCs at home. How funny that I earn a living sorting them out at work! First it was saying that there was a 'Plug & Play Configuration Error, strike F1 to continue or F2 to run setup' at which point if you chose to continue it would just begin to load up then freeze on the Windows screen & no further will it go. I left it like that till I got back from my 2nd trip to Malta as it was depressing me too much. However when I tried it again after I got back, it now doesn't display anything on the monitor except 'No signal'. Tried a different monitor but no difference. I notice that the power button on the front of the tower is orange instead of the usual green. It's been mentioned as a possible motherboard failure....?! Don't know how much that might cost but considering I had to spend about £130 to upgrade the obsolete RDRAM to 1GB I'm not feeling positive.I too am feeling that a new laptop is the way to go. Got my eye on one of these that sounds like it will blow the old PC away in any case!...."•HP Pavilion dv5-1111ea Entertainment Notebook PC •AMD Turion™ X2 Dual-Core Mobile Processor •4096 MB (2 x 2048 MB) •Supports up to 8 GB DDR2 memory •250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive 5400 rpm •IEEE 1394 FireWire® Interface •802.11b/g WLAN •Windows Vista® Home Premium •Built in Remote control •Built-in webcam and integrated microphone •15.4" WXGA High Definition BrightView Widescreen •Broadband 5GB monthly data allowance •Free USB Modem •250 texts a month •Initial payment of £49.99 £35 a month"It's the higher spec one lower down this page...http://www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/laptop_packages.omp

[Ross_K]

Mr Welfare is right in what he says about upgradeability, but pretty much any laptop in that price range is going to be limited to a bit of extra RAM or a bigger hard drive.

What else would you want to do to it?

You can upgrade other stuff like the graphics card or processor on pricier laptops. Proper docking stations are another thing which aren't available for cheap laptops

[MrRegieRitmo]

Where is the price benchmark between what is considered a decent laptop & what is considered a primitive one?

[r.welfare]

A primitive one will be priced in pre-decimal coinage Reg, I'd get hold of a copy of "What Laptop" or summat to confirm, but I reckon <£500 is "basic", and more than that isn't.I've got one of those Toshiba L300's Ross_K, I'd be recommending it to Ted if (a) the sole model that had XP under £400 hadn't just been discontinued and ( ours has had the motherboard replaced twice in the 3 months my wife has had it.

[Pillock]

Laptops is what Pillock does! :)There's no real point going for a good make if you want

[Justin Case]

Why not give these a try:

http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/shop/p ... egoryID=11

They tend to have end of line products or factory reworks. I've had one or two things from them, and they're good value.

[Ratdat]

Laptops is what Pillock does!

Ooh... in that case could you get me a screen for an Acer Travelmate 210? It's old as the hills I know (probably qualifies as laptop shite now) but it works perfectly bar the faulty screen. Mrs Ratdat trod on it

[morris_ital_lover]

do not under any circumstances get a dell latitude, they die quite badly, like my one has (as of two hours ago!)! Third time as well!m0rris