Guest JudgeMental Posted September 16, 2014 Share Posted September 16, 2014 anyone looking for a back up or cheap laptop this looks pretty good VFM. not cutting edge, far from it, but a decent 500 GB hard drive, 4 GB ram.... http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-inspiron-15-laptop-dell-day-deals-169-incl-vat-delivery-2001616 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdf Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 You bought a Dell product recently? They are nowhere near the quality they used to be! Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 gdf - 2014-09-17 2:30 PM You bought a Dell product recently? They are nowhere near the quality they used to be! Dave Not for many years, but the spec not bad for under £160?? Components as in many far more expensive laptops.including latest celeron chipset. It can be tweaked for better performance, also upgraded as its easy to swap parts apparently, unlike earlier Dells..... a Chromebook for the same sort of money has hardly any memory in comparison. some tips from Amazon customer feedback: "Upgrade possibilities: If you know what you are doing upgrading the hard drive to an SSD will help it feel more useable. Also, I have not done so yet, but my understanding is that you can upgrade this to 8GB of ram which could help too. It only has one slot for ram so you will have to remove the stock 4gb and replace it with an 8GB. Make sure to get the DDR3L (The L stands for low voltage)." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "So, quickly I'll highlight on a few things you can do to noticeably improve the performance of this laptop. -First, replace the HDD with a SSD. You will experience an immediate performance boost. You'll need a USB to SATA cable to clone the drive. It is very, very easy and basic. Samsung offers a great software to assist you in this process. -Second, uninstall McAfee as it ties up many of your systems resources. Microsoft Defender comes pre-loaded, just turn this on. Also, uninstall all the Microsoft apps you do not use. Most of these run in the background tying up CPU resources. -Third, unlock the CPU's parked cores as this will allow the processor to operate at it's highest output. To do this, follow these directory series. Control Panel\System and Security\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings. Then go to Advanced Power Settings. A new window opens, then scroll down to Processor Power Management and click to expand. You will see Minimum Processor State, click to expand. The default setting is 5%. Increase to 100%. You will notice that the Maximum Processor State is already at 100%. Apply the changes. Now you have a processor running at it's maximum performance capacity. You should see a overall noticeable performance increase in all areas. -Fourth, make sure you have the Power Saver mode OFF. This mode tells the CPU and other components to run at a minimum state, hindering performance. -Fifth, if you are comfortable with removing programs both in the control panel and in the registry, then remove all the unnecessary Dell software. You can use CCleaner to assist you. -Sixth, using CCleaner, go to the start-up programs which run in the background. Turn off all the programs and automatic updates that you won't use." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pelmetman Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Cant say I understand much of that techno speak Eddie :-S.................but at 160 quid its less than the second hand laptop I was looking at the other day, when my Compaq finally shuffled of its mortal drive ;-).............. Unfortunately not home for another fortnight so no point in ordering one :-(............. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yeti Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 I tend to see what the 'professionals' use such as banks. About 4 years ago my local branch was using Dell machines,so I bought a Dell note book. About a year ago the hard drive 'died'. Now the banks are using Lenovo machines. I know that some of the manufacturers share common components,but I've bought a Lenovo with a 1Tb hard drive as standard! The local council are still on Windows 7! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Components have come down so much in price...just buy a new Hard drive for it. I have a Lenova they are very good, but have bought this for travelling as if it gets nicked I wont be bothered.....I will keep everyone posted on first impressions etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Symbol Owner Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 yeti - 2014-09-17 4:04 PM The local council are still on Windows 7! I should hope that they are! Windows 8 is NOT fit for purpose! Not intuitive at all in my opinion! And........... I'm not alone..............see here: http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1926 So perhaps I should wait until next year to replace my tried and tested Windows XP with Windows 9!! ( on my lovely old Dell desktop, by the way -- which is why I was tempted -- until I saw that the offer laptop had Win 8 installed!) http://www.extremetech.com/computing/174583-windows-9-coming-in-2015-will-try-its-hardest-to-distance-itself-from-the-windows-8-train-wreck Colin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Nope...It has windows 8.1 supposed to much better. You can install a more popular desktop task bar apparently.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Symbol Owner Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 JudgeMental - 2014-09-17 5:28 PM Nope...It has windows 8.1 supposed to much better. You can install a more popular desktop task bar apparently.... Really Judge? My kids bought us a tiddly little Acer laptop for the 'van -- with Wndows 8.1 -- absolutely bl**dy unusable! Neither of us can get the hang of it -- I think that you are meant to poke the screen or something................ which seems all wrong to me! A very bemused and befuddled 70+ year-old desktop XP user. Colin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Joe90 Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Does anyone still buy laptops then ? security flaws by the bucket load come as standard, constant updates always needed, then eventually with or without SSDs slows to a crawl despite all the ram in the world, and a ropey CPU that's from the dark ages, no wonder its just a few quid, still it may OK for anyone that's not very IT savvy, but be warned Windows 8 OS was designed as a touch screen OS, it has been a disaster for Microsoft and its users, no wonder an option is very often available to "downgrade" to Win7, then get ready for more Microsoft fun downloading endless updates for that as well, even then your not out of the woods, some software that you may have purchased may not work under either OS, and of course Microsoft have stopped support for XP, that's why I said does anyone still buy laptops given all the above hoops the punter has to go through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Symbol Owner - 2014-09-17 5:36 PM JudgeMental - 2014-09-17 5:28 PM Nope...It has windows 8.1 supposed to much better. You can install a more popular desktop task bar apparently.... Really Judge? Colin. I hope so! (going by my tech savvy son here) lots of stuf online about it... http://www.pcworld.com/article/2055381/how-to-eradicate-metro-from-your-windows-8-1-pc.html http://listenmefirst.com/windows-7-start-menu-in-windows-8/ http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/show-hide-taskbar#1TC=windows-7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamw Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 I think Microsoft are just beginning to understand what a good OS is all about: It should increase in functionality without users having to be retrained each time to use it. This has cost all users a vast amount of time and as far as industry in concerned a huge amount of money, hence the reluctance of industry to adopt Windows 7 let alone Windows 8. Having realised this by introducing Windows 8 I can see Microsoft in future charging an annual fee to use the OS and receive necessary upgrades without the wasteful process of learning an altogether new interface. Obviously there was no need to do anything so sensible whilst huge profits could be made from rolling out completely new and baffling versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Joe90 Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 A very good post, but for what it's worth how many home users really "use" a PC, most if not everyone I know surfs the net, a few emails, tells the world via Facebook what they've had for breakfast. Tablets are becoming the norm, you don't have to invest years of your life just learning how to switch the thing on, I used to live and breath PCs, I look back now to all that wasted time and effort, I mean, Windows has performed an illegal operation for example, the only thing I think was almost illegal was all us dummies buying into yet another version of Microsoft crap, its all yesterdays garbage now as far as I'm concerned, Android is the new King as far as I'm concerned it just simply works, the only time my PC gets turned on is for the odd bit of Sony Vegas video authoring, other than that it would all go to landfill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JudgeMental Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 arrived today, first impressions are that its cheaply built, relatively light at 2kg, keyboard fine and screen better then I expected.... it will do the job, once I get rid of the awful bloatware! :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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