Page 1 of 5 year old laptop performance...

I`ve been offered a Toshiba Satellite 3000 laptop for sale...It may just suit the wife`s blogging, email, photography and surfing needs but I have a couple of questions... Can anyone help with the answers?

The spec is:

933Mhz Celeron processor
128Mb RAM (!!!)
15Gb hard-drive

The laptop is in pristine condition and, as they did then, cost over £1000 new. I would need to buy a new battery, extra memory and a PCMIA wifi card totalling approx £100 so the important question is how much they want for it first (I don`t know yet).

It`s running XP Home at the moment and seems fine with that...after upping the memory to 512Mb (it takes 1GB max), adding MS Office, Firefox and some low-level photo-editing software do you think this will still be a viable, usable laptop or is the processor just too old-hat and slow?

Failing that it`s going to have to be £350-400 for a new one for her at Christmas.

Thanks in advance.

julianf

I`ll be honest, if some-one asked me if I wanted it for free, I`d take it, but I wouldn`t buy it.

As you say, you`re going to spend £100 at least on it, so you may as well buy a cheap new one.

It will do what you want though. I have a PII 450 (desktop) which is sat in the spare room downloading files. If missus uses new pc for playing games, i can use that one to quickly look things up on internet etc, but I wouldn`t want to be sat at it for hours surfing. But using OpenOffice on it, is as fine now as it was in 1999 when I bought it :)

can buy a decent one for mrs for around £250-300 from pc world cant u?

See me after school Mr Jules.

One poke around the depths of what I laughing call "The Study".

I have one or two Toshiba 4600`s floating about (built in wifi (10mps) in one methinks), minimal memory but ugradeable, HDD size depends on what I have floating about.

THO uses one for her browsing\course work, the kids also have one each for You Tube\Cartoon Network & suchlike.

Theres a PCMCIA wifi card or two floating about under all this crap.

OS from a restore CD or you could go down the Linux route.

Spares aren`t a problem either ATM.




I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

I hate answering the phone at work - It disturbs my sleep.

This item was edited on Thursday, 22nd November 2007, 22:14

When `amateurs` (heh, check me out) sell IT gear they usually work on the `Well it cost a grand, so it must still be worth quite a lot` principle.

Still, 100 for all those bits and pieces is probably slightly more than its worth, so if you were to do that, I would want it for free or a couple of pints, tops.

As has been said, you can pick up new laptops for £300 now and youd get a warranty with that.

This is exactly the kind of age where you start having system f***ing problems.

I`d be very wary of throwing money at an old laptop or computer to bring it up to date, the parts tend to be more costly and you have to look at the reliability. How long before the internal screen connecting ribbon cable fails from it simply being opened and shut for instance ?

It`s a good basic laptop from the look of it, battery run time is supposed to be around 3.5 hours with a new battery, but I wouldn`t want to pay for one for something second-hand. There are supposed to be ways to rejuvenate an old laptop battery so that it holds a charge if you want to risk them, such as a freezing method, but be sure to read everything there is on the various procedures before trying any. I personally wouldn`t want a battery in my fridge, but it is a cheap option.

Max Resolution: is 1024 x 768 which is a little low, but it is a smaller 14.1 inch screen and the Geforce2go graphics aren`t that bad.

The ram isn`t that expensive as long as it`s a generic brand, just be sure it`s the right type which I believe is Sodimm 144-PIN DDR 133mhz SDRam. I saw 512mb for under £20 on ebuyer. They also have an internal MP54G5 Wireless Mini PCI Adapter for £10 which may or may not be suitable for the laptop, depends if it has the socket, or failing that a Wireless PCMCIA Network Adapter 54mbps 802.11g for £14.

I didn`t bother with links, stock there is changing all the time. Just go to the appropriate sections and click Show all Results if you want to find which is cheapest at the time. They`re not the best place to buy every time but I usually look there first as a basis for comparison.

At the end of the day you`re buying a 128mb ram laptop with a 15gb harddrive so I`d expect it to be reasonably cheap no matter how nice and clean it looks. It might take more ram and even a bigger harddrive but do you need to get technical and update the bios ? Hopefully not.