Help Oddworld Buy A New Laptop

[pennimania]

I keep buying stuff from these guys:Sterling - refurbished corporate stock at pretty good prices.

Mind you, the first thing I do on getting the hardware is increase the ram and stick in a bigger fresher hard-drive...

I just visited this site and it does look amazingly cheap! are they really reliable?


I am looking for a laptop for my daughter - she says

'I want a laptop to write my stories on and to download CD rom games'

any recommendations?

 

[Bob_the_lost]

What sort of games?

Sims 2 is no big deal for a laptop, but if you daughter is a Half life 2 monster...

 

[lobster]

The system requirements for The Sims 2 (from the official The Sims 2 website) are as follows:

Windows

* 800 MHz processor for systems with a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM. 2 GHz processor for systems without a T&L-capable video card with at least 32 MB of video RAM.
* 256 MB RAM
* Windows® XP, Windows ME, Windows 98 or Windows 2000 Operating System or better
* At least 3.5 GB of hard drive space

Mac

* 1.2 GHz processor
* PowerPC G4/G5
* (ATI) Radeon 9000 or better.
* 256 RAM
* Mac OS X 3.8 or better
* At least 3 GB of hard drive space

there are no 2 ghz laptops that are under £1000 so as long as you have a decent 3d graphics card, not a intel embeded video card, although they have improved in time.

 

[rich!]

I just visited this site and it does look amazingly cheap! are they really reliable?

The laptop I'm typing on now came from there. They've been doing the surplus stuff for 15 or more years, so I think they are getting pretty good at it.

Certainly, my experience of buying what used to be high-end corporate laptops dirt-cheap from surplus companies is pretty good.

I am looking for a laptop for my daughter - she says

'I want a laptop to write my stories on and to download CD rom games'

any recommendations?

Depends on the games. Personally, I go for "very small and light" - the Thinkpad X20 or the Fujitsu Lifebook - though they aren't the fastest machines available, the build quality of the Thinkpad is superb. The Fujitsu I can't speak for the build quality, but it does include a DVD drive in the laptop.

 

[pennimania]

Thanks for that

it is the Sims that she wants to play!!

I will let you know what we get!

 

[oicur0t]

HP laptops may not look good but they are and they have excellent warranties. Acer can give you fantastic specs for your money, give very good AMD alternatives to intel. They are great for home laptops tbh.

RE. dell - they're good some weeks, bad others. They are very slow to repsond to market price variations and you can have a month or two where they are overpriced....then all of a sudden they are better specced and the prices are better too. Timing is everything, especially in the laptop market as upgrades can be impossible/improbable.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

For an x86 laptop I'd buy IBM, myself, based on my experience of their reliability and durability. Fucking tanks, the Thinkpads.

 

[rich!]

For an x86 laptop I'd buy IBM, myself, based on my experience of their reliability and durability. Fucking tanks, the Thinkpads.

And they have the courtesy to put the service manuals on the websites. And, being IBM, the service manual is really good.

As to durable: the only permanent fault I have seen a Thinkpad exhibit was when I (drunk) dropped this one off a table onto the floor. There was an external monitor connected. It landed on the external monitor plug. Now it actually has a fault there.

When I next get a spare hour, I'll strip it down to the PCB and run a hot iron across the solder joints. It probably won't fix it, but it'll mean I can say I tried *everything*.