Jump to content

laptop suggestions


Wallis

Recommended Posts

Last Christmas, my parents gave me a Dell Inspiron 1300, celeron m 1.3GHz 256MB RAM, 37GB HDD. I'm going to be going away to school, so this is going to be my primary machine. What do i need to do to get it ready for that?

Wallis

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More ram

Seconded. You can find laptop memory pretty cheap from brand-neutral vendors (Newegg, etc). Just make sure it's compatible first!

I would also consider purchasing an external hard disk for data storage, if you're not comfortable replacing the internal drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I surrgest you also get some redundancy (nightly image of the hard drive would be good), if your laptop is your main computer, do not relie on it to surrvie a year of been taken from lecture to lecture. I guess the best method of redundancy is having another computer (old but works) with a hard drive (prefrably a RAID 1 array, but thats sort of more expencive) bigg enough for your stuff, and set up some scripting so your laptop copies your windows profile to it every night. Thats a decent level of redundancy. If you have the band width avalable you might want to consider also backing up to a remote location, this way if your place burns down your data is not lost.

Aditionaly, use TrueCypte, protect your data incase of theft!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even macs don't come with this sort of stuff melodic. Although you can buy laptops (Don't knoe if any of the macbooks have this) that have two hard drive bays and with two hard drives fitted you can RAID 0 or 1 them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, i just mentioned the whole redundency thing to my dad, and he said something along the lines of "but how important is the stuff on there anyway?" i said "term papers, for instance" he says "flash drive" I say "not everything will fit on a flashdrive" "but the other stuff doesn't matter" "it matters to me" "your point?" but we will get some more ram, at least.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good cheap backup is to email your work to yourself and use something like a gmail account as a remote storage (i have invites if you want one). encrypt it if your pissed at google reading your work. Chances of your hard drive and 2+ email providors dieing on the same day is remote.

Burn you work folder onto CD every month or so, and keep a working backup of the important stuff on a flash drive. If your working on large files and lots of them, consider a cheapotastic 2nd hand computer with a large hard disk for backups (people throw old computers away all the time, keep your eyes open). Then mirror your work folder to it on a regular basis.

A larger hard disk is a must in the long term, you just tend to accrue random crap you can't bare to delete when your at college. Extra ram is a must, as I said, max it out as this will be the one thing that keeps your machine usable for longer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

great advice VaKo, i completely forgot about my gmail account. plus I could access that at home too.

ah, i love google. except for the whole reading my stuff. not that i would have anything incriminating on my machine (no, not ME) :wink:

but the free part is nice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're looking to have this laptop last you a while and are planning on taking it with you to class, I would suggest having the battery tested and replaced if necessary. For some reason, laptop batteries tend to only last two years at the most (if used a lot).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well, my battery life was always abysmal, hour and a half at best. is it better to have it plugged in all the time, or should i let it drain completly sometimes? most of the time you see, its just on my desk, plugged in (mostly because by the time i get anywhere with it, it already is low battery). I've heard different stories from different people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What the hell happened to toshiba's methane cells??? out January my AR$£

Wasn't there a big issue of methane not being allowed on airplanes? I remember reading an article in popsci about those, but that was a while back, maybe spring '05. Can't find it right now though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with most of the stuff said here. More RAM is kind of a dumb thing though. I ALWAYS do that as soon as I buy a comp (max the RAM that is). It gives you the best performance from the time you buy it to the time it's dated and you still want to use it, and greatly increases resale value.

Flash drives, however, are not an optimal solution to redundant storage. Email was mentioned, and something like that is more appropriate. Very often schools will frown upon bringing your own removable media (for security reasons), but they are apparently too stupid to frown upon getting the files from your own ftp space. Keeping copies of your work on ftp or mail or something like that is ALWAYS a good idea. Very often teachers will let you submit things via email (or prefer it, but this is somewhat uncommon depending on your major and classes) and if your box breaks down, you can always get on a school box and pull up your work from backup. If you have bigger files you don't want to lose, my best advice is to back it up on a spare drive or a drive you have back home that won't be seeing much usage. Less usage = less wear on the drive and less chance of your backup drive dying.

Now, I have no redundancy on my iBook, and yet I've never had a need for it. I've had it for a little over a year (July issue 05 G4) and never had any problems. A little hint though just as a nice thing, if you have an iPod(headphone out)->stereo converter, maybe a keyboard and mouse, you can convert it to a desktop whenever you aren't mobile. My stereo rig is rather nice ^^. Takes like 2 minutes to set up, about 1.75 minutes of that is spent ripping through the tough plastic of the package for the converter cord kek.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ah yes, the bittersweet suspense of a blister pack.

to Haplo- I didn't buy this laptop, and only now have really been able to justify upgrading until now, seeing as I am incapable of paying for said upgrade.

I think i'm going to use my gmail, its easy, and importantly, free. At the school I'll be attending i've been told that many assignments are due by email, becauase of the schedule.

I think i will get a keyboared and mouse, this touchpad can get pretty annoying, but once again, i never really had a good reason to get them.

Here is another question: what are a few pieces of software that will be useful for education? (particuarly freeware)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Open Office is an ok replacement for office (some compatibilty issues with MS powerpoint still though, which isn't an excuse when it comes to deadlines), but you might find that MS Office is fairly easy/cheap to obtain at college.

Other than that just make sure to sercure you PC when your at uni, turn off file and printer sharing, run a firewall etc. We used to find peoples term papers shared with write access at my uni, just takes one dickhead with a copy of metaspolit to ruin your day. And get insurance for both theft and accidents.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...