Laptop question

Fish On Fabrications
Fiberglass Supply Depot
TinBoats.net

Help Support TinBoats.net:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Popeye

Popeye

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 18, 2007
Messages
4,873
Reaction score
16
Location
Nowhere near any plaid
My sister asked me what I thought about this laptop. Being the computer guru I am :roll:, have no freaking clue. Can't sayas I've heard anything good about gateway products though. If this is a piece of crap computer, what would be a good one. I'm guessing she doesn't want to really spend more than maybe $700.00 tops. She only basically surfs the internet and does emails. Basic games (no graphic intense, multi-player, on line games), games like spider solitaire. She does have a wireless router but I think all laptops can connect to them these days.

https://www.circuitcity.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4836207&sku=G180-15430
 
The specs for that laptop are decent. I'd be wary of buying from circuitcity as they have had recent financial troubles.


The good news is that for $700 your sister will have the choice of many, many laptops.

I have been buying Dell laptops at work for years and they have been reliable. I also buy the extended warranty that has a service rep visit me the next business day to make the repairs. What goes wrong with laptops? Hard disks eventually fail. Make a back-up! It will save you much time, money and aggravation. Screens and keyboards can go bad. We had a motherboard fail only once in about 15 computers over 7 years.

I have also had good luck with HP laptops. Stay away from the off-brands. I once bought a winbook and the hinge that holds the screen failed, causing the screen to crack. This happened twice in three years. Expensive repairs.

OK, so how to choose? Since her needs are minimal, any laptop, even a $300 netbook will work. Then it becomes more about how big the screen an keyboard are. Too small and they are hard to use. Too big and you feel like you are lugging around a suitcase. It's a personal thing for her to decide. There are a host of minor features that might sway her decision -- how many usb ports? like cupholders in a car, the more the better; memory card reader? nice if she has a digital camera.

Dell and Gateway are both good brands. Can she go to a store like staples and test drive the laptops? Even Staples has decent pricing. They have a Dell 1545 on sale now for $499.

In summary, the gateway laptop she picked would be fine, but there are many others at that price level to choose from.

Let me know if you have more specific questions.
 
That one would be great for her use.Price is right for the equipment that's installed.The free Windows 7 upgrade is a pretty good deal.Windows 7 is far superior to Vista and XP,but that's my opinion.I know there's some XP and Linux die hard fans on here.
 
I like Gateway products over Dell products. I have a Dell notebook and a Gateway notebook. The Dell lost its ability to use the USB ports (motherboard?). I had no luck trying to get warranty service for it. I tried in vain to get it repaired and it is still broken with tech service in India having no clue to what is wrong with it. Now on the other hand my Gateway has performed flawlessly. A friend of mine has a gateway that the video card failed in. I called Gateway for her and they talked me through some kind of diagnostic program that they could use to determine what was wrong with it. They sent a video card and told me to call when I received it so they could talk me through the process of installing it. I do not know a lot about tearing apart notebooks but Gateway's service department makes it easy. There was an English speaking American on the phone which makes service much easier.
 
If internet and emails with the basic gaming (no hardcore video graphics) she'll be fine. Circuit City is actually still bankrupt and are not in business. The name Circuit City and the website circuitcity.com were bought by a private company who has been in buisness in electronics since 1949 (lot of useless knowledge since this is an account that I looked at for quoting insurance on)...

Anyways, I'm not a big Gateway fan, but for that price it's not bad.. I just bought (last week) a new HP with pretty much the same stuff, only upgraded Operating System and processor speeds for a few hundred bucks more. I don't do any gaming, but I do buy laptops to last atleast 4-5 years before they are considered outdated...

One good thing about this comp is that it's a 64bit operating system, and even though it comes with 4gb ram, it can still be upgraded to even more (even though I didn't find it on the spec sheet).. I think the 320gb, 5400speed hard drive is pretty standard know, but the processor is a little slow which is one of the main reasons the price is so low.

But in final, it should do her fine for year - just make sure the first thing she does is get rid of the norton, mcafee or whatever virus protection they put on it and install Avast - it's free and it's the only system I've used so far that hasn't scrambled me with viruses... and use Firefox and dump the Internet Explorer virus proned web browser...
 
Nothing wrong with that system for your sister's needs, but I'd suggest that unless she "needs" to buy now (student going off to college, business requirement, etc) I'd recommend that she wait until Windows 7 is available on a system she wants to buy.

I know that most of the Vista systems being sold today are being sold with a free upgrade to Windows 7, but she will be much better served by a system that was built from the ground up for Windows 7.

I've heard some bad things about the upgrade process for Windows 7 and even though MS has claimed to be addressing them, I don't think it's worth the chance if all one has to do is wait a couple months to buy a system with the new OS pre-installed and configured for the hardware it is shipped with.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Well, she said she was gonna wait until Windows 7 comes out. I'll be getting a new desktop then too. Mine is a 2002 Dell and showing its age pretty good. After I replace it and move whet i want moved to it, I'll take the old one in and have it "professionally" cleaned and what not and prolly give it to the daughter.
 
Popeye said:
...... After I replace it and move whet i want moved to it, I'll take the old one in and have it "professionally" cleaned and what not and prolly give it to the daughter.
Click to expand...

No need to waste money having it "professionally cleaned". Depending on how "clean" you want it, there are several free utilities available that will do a through cleaning and wipe the free space on the disk by overwriting it to DOD (3 passes), NSA (7 passes) or Gutmann standards (35 passes).

Check out cCleaner. IMHO it's the best of the bunch.
 
if shes only using it for internet and emails and some games like built in games,, then she can go for a NETbook, which is range from $249-$399 they have all kinds,, hp, samsung, gateway, toshiba, etc,,
check them out
 
DocWatson said:
Popeye said:
...... After I replace it and move whet i want moved to it, I'll take the old one in and have it "professionally" cleaned and what not and prolly give it to the daughter.
Click to expand...

No need to waste money having it "professionally cleaned". Depending on how "clean" you want it, there are several free utilities available that will do a through cleaning and wipe the free space on the disk by overwriting it to DOD (3 passes), NSA (7 passes) or Gutmann standards (35 passes).

Check out cCleaner. IMHO it's the best of the bunch.
Click to expand...

So, if I run the ccleaner with 35 passes over the entire hard drive. That would delete everthing on the drive and then I could use the system disk (providing I can find it) to put it back to the way it was when I first bought it? Not even sure where that disc would be right now.
 
Popeye said:
DocWatson said:
Popeye said:
...... After I replace it and move whet i want moved to it, I'll take the old one in and have it "professionally" cleaned and what not and prolly give it to the daughter.
Click to expand...

No need to waste money having it "professionally cleaned". Depending on how "clean" you want it, there are several free utilities available that will do a through cleaning and wipe the free space on the disk by overwriting it to DOD (3 passes), NSA (7 passes) or Gutmann standards (35 passes).

Check out cCleaner. IMHO it's the best of the bunch.
Click to expand...

So, if I run the ccleaner with 35 passes over the entire hard drive. That would delete everthing on the drive and then I could use the system disk (providing I can find it) to put it back to the way it was when I first bought it? Not even sure where that disc would be right now.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that you couldn't do that. If you think about it, how could you run the program and ask it to wipe the "entire hard drive" if the program and the OS that runs it are on that drive ??

What cCleaner does is clean out all the temp files, documents and internet history, log files and can clean out the registry. Then, after it removes all the crap (it used to be call Crap Cleaner when it first came out) it can be set to wipe the free space that it just created to make the data unrecoverable by any method.

If you wanted it to wipe the entire drive, you would have to pull the drive and slave it to a system with cCleaner installed, format the drive and then run cCleaner on that drive to wipe the free space. You could then reinstall XP and be certain that nothing you did on that machine could ever be recovered. But if you don't have or can't find the XP disk, then it's a moot point and you should go with the first option. It really will do everything you want done to clean the drive, but will leave the patched and updated OS installed and all the programs you want to leave behind functioning and ready to use.
 
there are so many ways of doing it,, if your looking to just reformat your hd then put windows xp cd at start up and press any button at start up,, (thats if you dont need anything on the hard drive)
if you want to keep everything on there, then i would go to filehippo.com and download the following to help clean out the computer from spyware, viruses, malware, etc etc

SUPERanti spyware
malware bytes
spyware terminator,
spybots search and destroy

trust me you will find any type of spyware or anything you need to clean up, this is a standard when IT guys go and clean up client's pc remotely!
 
Popeye said:
I could run it from the 3.5" A drive?
Click to expand...
Not a chance. You still need an OS to run the program and a 3.5" floppy disk doesn't even have the capacity to put the installation file on, let alone install the program.

Seriously, what do you need to clean out that cCleaner won't do for you ?? If you are planning to pass this machine down to your daughter, and not donate or junk it, then any data you created when you were using the machine will be deleted by cCleaner and if you then wipe the free space, even at 7 passes, the data will be gone or so overwritten as to be unrecoverable.

If you are really that concerned, hard drives are cheap today. So pull the HD, install a new one and install XP on that drive. Then take the old drive and drill 5 or 6 holes through it, beat on it with a sledge hammer a bit, toss it in your boat and use it for a downrigger weight next time you go out. :wink:

Kemical.... I don't think what he is trying to do is clean out spyware and malware. Your recommendations are spot on and would thoroughly clean out any junk, viruses, spyware, etc. But those programs are designed not to corrupt or delete personal data unless it's infected. I suspect he's on top of that. What he wants is to remove all data traces of his use of the machine. cCleaner does that. Different utility for a different job. :)
 
Well, there is that pesky Green AV that all I could do was tell it to not load. Can't even remember how I did that. Sort of looked like the task manager popup but wasn't task manager. I tried like 8 different things so I get confused. I remember typing some stuff in the run window and a screen popped up and I unclicked the box or something and finally got it to stop with its bothersome bogus virus scan. I know, I'm like an IT manager's worst nightmare:

IT: "What happened?"
ME: "Donno, I clicked some stuff and it quit working"
IT: "What did you click?"
ME: "Donno, I clicked a lot of things"
IT: "Why isn't there anything on the screen?"
ME: "Donno, it want blank after I typed Format c: /u"
 
Here's a new app for you to try. Should be right about the level of your technical expertise. :wink:
 

Attachments

  • MS Word for Blondes 1.0.jpg
    MS Word for Blondes 1.0.jpg
    12 KB · Views: 597

Latest posts

Top