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Reccomendations for a cheap laptop.
Casual
Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Flap Flap Flap Registered User regular
Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle Flap Flap Flap Registered User regular
My friend has moved house and doesn't have room for his old desktop PC anymore so I reccomended he get a laptop. Trouble is he uses a computer so little its hard for him to square the cost but he does need one.
Any computer he buys only needs to be able to run firefox, MSN, MS office and Itunes so on that last part something with a decent size hard drive would be preferable but obviously a lot of processing power or a graphics card is unnecessary. I was looking around at webbooks but even buying a new one of them for £300 seems like overkill for his needs.
Any recommendations? Anything under £200 or so would be great.
Any computer he buys only needs to be able to run firefox, MSN, MS office and Itunes so on that last part something with a decent size hard drive would be preferable but obviously a lot of processing power or a graphics card is unnecessary. I was looking around at webbooks but even buying a new one of them for £300 seems like overkill for his needs.
Any recommendations? Anything under £200 or so would be great.
Casual on
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If a netbook is out of the budget over there, check craigslist for whatever used laptop you can find. If you are competent with computers, it shouldn't be too hard to make sure tis runnign right.
You can get the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 for £200 in it's base configutarion, although the £229 option looks like the one to go for.
http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&dgc=ST&cid=5186&lid=121454&acd=23975984921941536
This is pretty much what I'm looking for. Any more suggestions would be appreciated though.
Be aware that some of those are running Ubuntu (i.e. Linux), not Windows. If he needs to run iTunes, MSN, and Office, he'll need to get a Windows machine. Linux has equivalent programs, but they aren't the same. Also, those have very small hard drives.
I'd go for something like this if you can spend a bit more:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/1000H-BLK067X-Netbook-Windows-Preloaded-160GB/dp/B001J2YZ04/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1237871680&sr=8-8
I assume you can install Windows XP on it? Licenses for that should be pretty easy to come by, the lack of CD/DVD drive might make it slightly more complicated though.
This would be an issue. I don't know one end of linux from the other and my friend knows considerably less about computers than I do. Can the dell have xp?
Yes, the Dell has an XP option. You just have to choose it.
Its not so much that as it wouldn't run any of the programs he's getting a laptop for.
From personal experience of the Acer One running Linux, it has an interface overlay so you never need to actually look at linux proper. Basically, you just have this when you boot up.
Those big buttons launch things like Instant Messenger, Firefox, OpenOffice etc. It's really easy to use. Now, obviously you won't be able to install Microsoft Office, but OpenOffice does everything MS Office can and, correct me if I'm wrong, will open and save to MS Office file formats. Instant Messenger will I'm sure let you use your MSN Messenger profile to log in, so it will function essentially identically and Firefox is, well, Firefox.
At a shy under £190 for the Linux Acer Aspire One, I believe your friend could cope with familiarising himself with OpenOffice.
iTunes is the only issue I can see, but for the sub-£200 price tag you aren't going to get a hard drive big enough to make iTunes any use anyway.
I like the netbooks for what they are, but I would warn you that I think they'd be hell to use as a main computer. They are tiny, which is great, but also means a tiny keyboard and a tiny screen.
Well its better than what he has now, his only means of going on the internet right now is an ipod touch. I reacon he'll have to buy an external hard drive and keep his itunes library on there. You can do that right?