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| Thread ID: 65427 | 2006-01-17 22:00:00 | Lap top purchase | supergran (108) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 422003 | 2006-01-17 22:00:00 | Around about May, we will be looking into the purchase of a lap top, for someone who possibly be bed ridden, either in hospital, or a rest home. What do we look at when we buy. We know nothing about laptops. We want to be able to go online and play minor games, possibly a bit of photo resizing and minor graphics work. We are buying another flat screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, all to plug into laptop, and will use the lap top, sort of like a tower. I have heard about WiFi etc, but don't really know what it means. If in a resthome etc, and want broadband, or faster, what do I need in the laptop or extra? Sorry, can't explain better, but thought I would come here, and try and get some imput. I have read lap top info here, but don't really know what we need, and what we dont'. I do know, we shouldn't go under 512 ram, as it will be XP, and running photo software, will eat 256. LOL TIA :help: |
supergran (108) | ||
| 422004 | 2006-01-17 23:34:00 | What sort of price range are you looking at? | plod (107) | ||
| 422005 | 2006-01-17 23:47:00 | My experience is used *laptops* has been bad. One fall off a desk, or one trip to the beach can do serious damage. If you don't believe me, take a look on Trademe for laptops with busted screens. A laptop simply take a lot more abuse than the equivalent PC. I'm a big fan of Toshiba Satellite. Also nice, but usually pricey is the IBM Thinkpad. I know I'm going to get some hate mail, but I tend to avoid Asus, Apple and Acer. I haven't used HP or Sony in a while, so I offer no opinion on it. Almost any new laptop will have more than enough expansion ports, so I wouldn't be overly concerned WiFi or Bluetooth. If it missing a feature, just purchase the appropriate device. Almost half of the manufacture price of a laptop is the screen, so it'll have a huge impact on the price. As far as I'm aware, all new laptops support external keyboard, monitor, mice and Ethernet LAN without special equipment. An extra piece of equipment called a "docking station" lets you quickly connect / disconnect on a desk. Any new laptop will probably have enough battery life, and CPU performance to satisfy you. I'd recommend at least 512MB of RAM, to support Windows XP. Of course, video and disk performance on a sub-$3,000 laptop is not going to be as good as the equivalent PC, but since you don't sound like a "serious" gamer, it shouldn't be a problem. One with CDRW or DVD RW I'll leave to your personal preference. |
kingdragonfly (309) | ||
| 422006 | 2006-01-17 23:58:00 | Well for broadband all you will need is a phone line to your room, depending on what phone company the rest home uses, and if the home is in an area that has it. Best bet ask the rest home people what phone company they use, then ring them (phone company) and ask "if I have a phone line to my room, "can it be set up for broadband". As for wireless (WiFi) unless you plain on wandering the halls with your laptop, a ADSL pug in modem would be fine, (there are very good deals out there where when you sign up for broadband with whatever ISP " you get a free modem with it and it plugs in to 1 of the USB ports on your computer. Laptop or Desktop, depends on what you would like to do. Laptop, small / easy to carry round /can sit in bed and use it. Desktop, (if you only want it to use in your room) keyboards a good size / bigger montors / everything is always plugged in, aka printer. If you are going to do alot of photo work on it, I would recommend buying a Desktop PC, at least 512 ram ( 1 gig is better) . Ask any of your friends (if they use computers) about a good pc shop that they know of, then go explain to the person there what you plain /want to use the pc for, also that "you might want to upgrade later", just in case you would like to add something to your pc later, that wont cost you a forture or having to buy a new pc. Hope this helps Just a thought if you go to a pc shop, when they try to sell you the pc of your dreams, ask for the specs sheet on it ,type/scan it in here and I'm sure one of the nice people in here will make sure you are not being ripped off and its what you need, to do what you want to do with it :) |
WhiteWolf4 (3713) | ||
| 422007 | 2006-01-18 00:07:00 | We will be buying brand new, didn't look at second hand, cos she prefers it to be under warranty . Most likely price will be upwards of $2000 and we understand that, and will worry about it later . LOL Kingdragonfly, thanks you have answered heaps of our questions, and as for the screen being the big price, we are buying a flat screen lcd? separate, so it will just plug in . So the screen size on the laptop isn't really an issue for us . As for battery life, we can run it from mains power can't we? No, sure aren't serious gamers, the most serious it gets is mahjong . LOL I looked up, so partially understand wifi, and ethernet stuff, but aren't really any the wiser, but guess when we need it, I will be able to explain to the salesman exactly what is needed, and he will sell us what we need! Well in an ideal world anyway . LOL Thanks for your help . |
supergran (108) | ||
| 422008 | 2006-01-18 00:14:00 | Thanks Whitewolf, you answered more of my questions . Especially the ones about net access . She already has an adequate desktop puter, but has decided a lap top will make more sense for later . She won't be doing any wandering with it though . Neither of us has been able to afford broadband expense, but will most likely be looking into it when she is less mobile . I will remember that about the specs and to post them here . We both knew exactly what we wanted in a desktop, but some of the lap top stuff we knew nothing about, which is why I asked here . Thanks again . :thumbs: |
supergran (108) | ||
| 422009 | 2006-01-18 01:13:00 | Most likely price will be upwards of $2000 ... As for battery life, we can run it from mains power can't we? Any laptop will run on mains. It autodetects the lack of mains power, and runs on battery when needed. At $2,000 you'll have a wide selection. At $1,400 or better you could get * an IBM Thinkpad R51e Notebook, Celeron M 370, 1.5GHz, 512MB DDR, 40GB, 15" TFT, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, WLAN, WinXP Home * Toshiba Satellite L20 Notebook, Celeron M 360, 1.4GHz, 256MB DDR2, 40GB, 15" TFT, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, WLAN, WinXP Home + separate 256MB upgrade |
kingdragonfly (309) | ||
| 422010 | 2006-01-18 01:26:00 | Glad to be of some help, since i don't know where you live (NZ,, where ever) If gran is just using Laptop/Desktop for email /pic files, then dailup is CHEAPEST. |
WhiteWolf4 (3713) | ||
| 422011 | 2006-01-18 07:27:00 | This isn't for me, is for my elder sis who has cancer. We are on a couple of message boards, photography ones, and broadband would sure make the pages load faster. LOL And yes, she realises dial up is cheapest, it is what she has now, but why not treat herself once time is getting shorter. And we live in Christchurch, thanks for the ideas, have written them down, with the specs. |
supergran (108) | ||
| 422012 | 2006-01-18 12:29:00 | My only experiences of laptops is Asus brand, and it's fantastic. I set it up with adsl (broadband) with pretty minimal problems using a freebie modem from Xtra. It works great, and although the specs are fairly low, after I upgraded the RAM to 512 it does all it's asked to, ie run Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Microsoft Office appications quite comfortably, simultaneously, on XP Home. I think a lot of folks here would recommend the brand. |
Greg (193) | ||
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