HI All,

I'm sick of sitting at my desk, so I'm considering getting a secondhand (possibly new depending on price) laptop instead.

I am wanting advice on what minimum spec I should be looking at, all I really need it for is browsing the web (broadband, i've just wired our two pc's upto a router and we share broadband, i'll probably go wireless on the laptop though, would that mean doing it all again wirelessly?)

As well as browsing the web, I need to be able to upload photo's from my digital camera, so at least a couple of usb ports are needed.

Thats about it really, because if I can get one cheap enough i'll keep the desktop pc for downloading/playing games, the hard work stuff :D

So what spec & price should I be looking at minimum?

Thanks :D

You can make do with something basic for all you need to do. I have a p2 400 with 256mb ram and it runs XP fine and firefox, outlook etc. I would recommend a minimum of 256mb for xp though as it sluggish with anything less. You can pick up something with that sort of spec pretty cheap on eBay.

edit - Just thought to add, you should look to pay £150 - £200 for something that sort of spec. If you go up to about £500 you start to get a lot better spec and new.

you could certainly manage with any budget laptop on sale today (more peace of mind than 2nd hand). Probably be looking at £400 ish.

Thanks March & Cyclone,

I'ev been keeping an eye out on the Toshiba Satellite's, not the most easy on the eye, but it's what it can do that matters, like I say, as long as I can get online and it can cope with being on for a long time, plus internal cdrom as well so I can install a few bits of software.

Thinking about the broadband side of it all, would I be able to just install a network card (if it didnt have one) and wire it up to the router we're already using?

I'm actually hoping to find somthing £200 and under, as i'm on a tight budget, and it's only laziness sake i'm after one really :blush:

If I can't find anything suitable, I might get a 17" TFt monitor and move the base unit nex tto the settee and have the TFT on the coffee table :D

Layyzeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

any modern laptop (last 2 years) will come with built in networking (not wireless though). So it would just be a matter of a long cable.

Wireless could be added easily via usb or pcmcia card and a wireless access point plugged into your existing router.

£200 as a price point puts you firmly into 2nd hand territory I think.

I have a new Toshiba Equium laptop. It's not light and the battery is less than useless! but it's plenty powerful enough for everything i want to do.
At the moment i have Firefox, Photoshop 7 and Dreamweaver open without any complaints.

I paid £600 for it at christmas. You'll probably find one cheaper than that now though :).

Also.....I have been reading rave reviews about the MV Mobeus 1.4C (http://www.go-mv.com/showdet.php?id=138). It is a little more expensive but the reviews i read make it sound awesome for the money.

I support the people who fix toshiba laptops, I would advise caution when buying quite a few of them. The sat pro 6000 /6100 and the tecra 9000/9100 range are ropey to be polite. Some of the newer models are not so bad but I still would not buy any of them! If you are looking at one, PM me with the info and I may be able to give you some feedback.
New Siemens Amilo range are cheap and not bad all things considered, to be honest if you are prepaired to spend £500 you should get something pretty good as long as you don't want to play the latest games.

Agree with neeeeeeeeekkkk on his points. You need to decide what you want to do ultimately with it.

I sell quite a range of branded new laptops ranging from the basic to the ridiculously fast. PM if you want brochures, specs, prices etc

ok, thanks alot for all your replies, from looking around today it would seem i'm looking at around the £300+ mark for a decent 2nd user laptop, whereas for another £200 I can have brand new :?

I'm not looking for somthing top spec really, I just want to be able to sit on the settee n browse the net n upload photo's, rather than be sat here :)

So many options

ok...next step...

I bought a laptop, now I need some help with adding it to my network :)

my two pc's are wired to a router,I would like to be able to connect my laptop wirelessly to the same router, someone earlier mentioned this (thanks) but I could do with a bit more information, as i've not dealt with wireless before.

What do I need to buy? the laptop is not wireless ready, it has a 10/100 ethernet card and a modem.

My router has 1 USb and 2 ethernet ports available.

Thanks in advance for any help, it's really appreciated :)

To round of the first part of the thread, and to help others with similar queries:

Can you tell us what you bought and how much?

Since you have an ethernet cable, depending on wether you have a internet connection, Broadband is needed- you can set up a wireless connection. The wireless modem thingys start at around £60 again eBay for bargains, its considered a waste of money but it is useful form work as you can connect anywhere- pointless reply- maybe it will help? Oh yes do you have a spare battery for your lappy they are extremly useful the life of mine without spare battery or plug is about 3 hrs

I bought a 2nd user Compaq Presario, PIII 700mhz, 6gb, 128 memory, dvd, £155

I want it as a work in progress as much as anything, i've got my stable pc to work from properly if anything goes wrong, it's running windows ME, but i'm gonna see how it goes when I install XP.

I'm gonna get a USB extension cable first, just to get it online (so I can save up for the wireless stuff, i'm also a bit worried about security also)

Battery is dead as a dodo, i'm gonna be looking out for one, but it's fine on mains (I only want it for in the living room, so it's no biggie)

I've not actually picked it up yet lol, I won it last night on ebay

I know alot of people are obsessed with speed etc, but I still remember being online with my first pc, paying £120 for a new.... 1.2gb hard drive :D (yes 1 POINT 2 lol not 12)
running on 64mb ram, 15" monitor, and it's still going strong today,

Now looking foward to infuriating nights scratching my head (again) :D

Oh one tip, never buy a safecom router, unless your some kind of computer engineer, mine was a nightmare.

That sounds like a good price, I have seen similar spec machines go for a lot more than that recently. You might find xp runs a bit slow with only 128mb, it tends to use nearly that much without anything running. You could probably pick up another 128 pretty cheaply though.

HI ,

I was worried about that too, but my bf's pc only has 128mb and runs XP no problem, so we'll see what happens.

I'm a bit of a geekette :D so i'm really looking forward to finding out new stuff, i've not had laptop experience before (that sounds so wrong :heyhey: )

I've come into this discussion late so apologies for dropping back a bit..

But... when it comes to buying a laptop second hand you should really check the battery capacity and life before you buy. They tend to have a certain shelf life that means you may get a whole lot less use out of them if you buy second hand... and of course if you intend to actually use it as a mobile computer platform (away from the mains) then this is obviously a vital consideration.

Cheers :)

I would suggest opening up the battery if it's knackered and seeing what type of cells it uses. Quite a few laptops just use standard cells so you may be able to cobble a new one together quite cheaply. Thats if you can't find one on Ebay.

Well here I am *Stretches out on sofa with Pina Colada...ok water* I got it home about half hour ago, networked it up and got online.

Its running ME at the moment, i'll probably leave it on, it's a lovely little machine, im very happy with it indeed.

As for the battery life, I already knew it was Kapput before I bid, thats not a major factor for me as i'm only using it in the house (approx 10 foot away from my pc lol...god im idle)

Main thing now is getting used to a different keyboard, so apologies for mass mistake making over the next few days :D

Thanks again for all your help, I hope I can be of as much help to other people on here in the future :D

oh, and don't mind me if I waffle on about it all the time, hehe I've wanted one for so long!

any indicators as if they have any more laptops at that price ?

Well the best piece of advice i have for anyone buying a used laptop, is to install the latest Synaptics Touchpad drivers (http://www.synaptics.com/support/drive.cfm). Almost all laptops use these drivers and installing them will give you tons of options for your touchpad.
I changed the settings on my touchpad so that the right side of my touchpad worked as a page scroll ;).

Also, my old laptop started off with 128MB RAM and running XP Pro. It ran fine too. I also turned off any un-neccesary services to boost performance too.
There is an excellent guide as to what services can be turned off on Black Viper's (http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm) website ;).

Hope this helps :thumbsup:

Thanks for that Vidster, this has a scrolly thing already so thats pretty cool, it was the only thing i was missing until I noticed it was there :blush:

I'll give those sites a good read later too..

Willman, I bought it off ebay, it was a private seller, not a shop. I used the advanced search features to find one local, then bombarded the seller with loads of questions, the main one being ' can i collect and see it running first' :D

As long as you don't mind a little cosmetic damage (just make sure it definately is only cosmetic) then you can pick some good bargains up on ebay