Helping my mother buy a new computer

[Gordon]

My mother insists she needs a new computer, even though she has a perfectly nice XP Sony Vaio.

She wants to use the Sony XP machine as a "backup" computer, and get something new, and also get broadband. --Yes, she is still on dial-up.

Any suggestions on brands? Consumer Reports ranks Dell high.

 

[slavetoabunny]

I have been using my Acer Aspire One mini-laptop for a little over six months now. It has plenty of power and storage capacity, internal wireless, and built-in webcam. It has performed flawlessly and I love it. It cost me $350, but I think you can get one less expensively now. One thing I love is that it comes with Windows XP. The only drawback is that it does not have an internal CD drive. You have to plug in an external drive to load your software (unless you do it online).

http://www.acer.com/aspireone/about.html

 

[NorthernAutumn]

I have a dell Inspiron 1501 laptop.

Some days I really hate it...
I'll jot down the name of Nate's laptop when I get home... his is wicked... so much more storage capacity.

Dell laptops have a tendency to have really crappy batteries that kick off like 1 week after the warranty expires.. Yeah, customer service is good, but I can't be shelling out $200 for a new battery every year.

If she gets a dell, make it a desktop model. Otherwise, never ever use a dell laptop on your actual lap, never let it just run off the battery (always have to plug these ones in). Should help to save energy.

If I were to do it again, I would get a cheap little Acer Aspire, as Patti suggested. (In fact, I might get one anyway ).

(Honestly, desktop models are a far better bang for your buck. The only reason anyone should buy a large OS in laptop format is if they are taking it to work for research purposes. Computers are so delicate, and shouldn't spend a lot of time being jostled about... My parent's have a desktop from 89 that still runs faithfully on a daily basis, whereas laptops last maybe 3-4 years.)

A little tiny laptop will run MS office applications, no problem. I use one for outdoor field work in my studies.

(Wow,... what a rant!)

 

[Gordon]

slavetoabunny wrote:

I have been using my Acer One mini-laptop for a little over six months now. It has plenty of power and storage capacity, internal wireless, and built-in webcam. It has performed flawlessly and I love it. It cost me $350, but I think you can get one less expensively now. The only drawback is that it does not have an internal CD drive. You have to plug in an external drive to load your software (unless you do it online).

I just like to keep my mother up to date with the regular desktop computers. She won't buy a Mac, but she will buy the latest Windows desktop machine, so we're going shopping, on Saturday morning,

 

[NorthernAutumn]

If your mother likes her Windows XP, and is comfortable working with it, she will not likely really like Vista

I find vista frustrating.. have to modify it a bit, as it has so many safeguards built in that it's hard to function without closing a million popup dialogue boxes.

Vista will not support any software pre-1995, which has completely messed up a number of my old files. Can't use my old games, read my old work from school, nada.

You can get dos-box to remedy it a bit, but I'm not tech savvy enough to fight through all the C prompt stuff.

 

[Saudade]

Toshiba made the first laptop and they are still making the best. I've never had a problem with them. I have a lot more to say on them, but I'm too tired.

 

[BethM]

I have an unbranded desktop (my husband built it for me), and also a netbook. I use the desktop for anything that needs a cdrom, and it has a huge harddrive so I use it for storage.

My netbook is small, light, and has a really awesome battery life. I use it for surfing the internet and checking email. It's an Asus, about $300, and I really like it. I got a wireless mouse, so I don' t have to worry about using the track pad. I have networked it wirelessly to my desktop computer, soif both of them are on, I can accessanything on my desktopvia the netbook. It's really great for when I want toread email from bed or the sofa. It did come with XP, so that was a plus. (I still have XP on my desktop, as well.)

I think I have read that Windows 7 will be resource-light enough to run on netbooks, sowhen Microsoft stops providing updates for XP, I will probably put Windows 7 on both machines.

My husband has afull-sized laptop withVista on it. He gripes a lot, but when I ask him specifically what he doesn't like,his main answeris that it'snot XP!Most of hisissues can be corrected by adjustingsettings, and just getting used to it.

 

[Gordon]

Well, I need a beer now. I love my mother, and helping her, but I get stressed out by it all.

Anyway, she bought the HP Pavillion, Model # P6110F, from Office Depot this morning, for $499. It has almost 1/2 a Terabyte of space on the hard drive, 6 Gigs of RAM, and a 2.8 GHz processor.

Her older AOL version does not work on this machine, so I had to call and ask for a new disk - AOL 9.1(for Vista) - be snail mailed to her. She is still on dial-up.

You may be wondering why my mother would even care about getting a new computer if she's still on dial-up, but she does intend to make the broadband leap soon.

I moved her nice Sony Vaio machine with XP, to the basement, so she has a really nice 2nd computer, now. She paid more than twice as much for that computer, in January of 2003. Amazing. :shock:

One other kink in the conversion process, was her Canon scanner software does not work on the new Vista machine; so I moved that unit downstairs with the old XP computer. She'll have to buy a new scanner for the new Vista computer. --Irritating, to me. I think that's ridiculous.

I continue to believe this incompatibility issue is a planned obsolescence conspiracy!

 

[Gordon]

NorthernAutumn wrote:

If your mother likes her Windows XP, and is comfortable working with it, she will not likely really like Vista

LOL, I am seeing that, now that I have personally experienced it.

Vista seems like a Microsoft wannabe version of Mac OS X.

 

[kirbyultra]

Gordon wrote:

Well, I need a beer now. I love my mother, and helping her, but I get stressed out by it all.

Anyway, she bought the HP Pavillion, Model # P6110F, from Office Depot this morning, for $499. It has almost 1/2 a Terabyte of space on the hard drive, 6 Gigs of RAM, and a 2.8 GHz processor.

I know all about computer support for one's mother and family-- it can be so frustarting :twitch:

6GB for $499 isn't a bad deal from Office Depot. Desktops are so much cheaper than laptops. I just found a real sweet deal a couple weeks ago on a eMachine laptop for my mom's birthday which isn't until December but it was too good a deal to pass up. 2GB widescreen for $312 including shipping and tax from buy.com. It had Vista but I just wiped it this evening. Now I have a lot of trouble finding all its XP drivers :grumpy:

My brother has a netbook and 7 months after he got it conked out and died on him. I think it's an Acer Aspire One. I work with computers for a living but I couldn't fix his netbook. :XI'm having him ship it back to them under warranty -- I think he might have a busted hard drive and there's no way I am cracking his fairly new laptop open given that it's still under warranty... but it costs him $30 to ship it back and forth... it's not been a good experience so far!

 

[SOOOSKA]

Hey I heard that Dell computers are made by Toshiba.

Has anyone else heard this?

Susan

 

[Gordon]

kirbyultra wrote:

6GB for $499 isn't a bad deal from Office Depot. Desktops are so much cheaper than laptops. I just found a real sweet deal a couple weeks ago on a eMachine laptop for my mom's birthday which isn't until December but it was too good a deal to pass up. 2GB widescreen for $312 including shipping and tax from buy.com. It had Vista but I just wiped it this evening. Now I have a lot of trouble finding all its XP drivers :grumpy:

I thought $499 was a pretty good deal for what she was getting, especially considering she paid nearly $1,200 for her Sony Vaio, back in January of 2003.

My mother's computers have all been the stationary deskop variety, with the exception of her 1st one, a very early IBM laptop, she bought around 1994. It had an 80 Mb hard drive, 8 Mb of RAM, and a 1200 baud modem, running Windows 3.1. Prodigy was the internet connection she used back then.

 

[kirbyultra]

Gordon wrote:

I thought $499 was a pretty good deal for what she was getting, especially considering she paid nearly $1,200 for her Sony Vaio, back in January of 2003.

My mother's computers have all been the stationary deskop variety, with the exception of her 1st one, a very early IBM laptop, she bought around 1994. It had an 80 Mb hard drive, 8 Mb of RAM, and a 1200 baud modem, running Windows 3.1. Prodigy was the internet connection she used back then.

Those were the most awesome computers. System beep. Dos prompt. About 50 pounds of steel.

My first computer was Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, 14.4 baud modem, 4MB of RAM (oh my god) and I don't remember how many MB in HDD but I do remember when they first came out with the CD-R, it was totally unbelievable to fit 700+ MB on a DISC! That laptop of your mom's must have cost her a fortune at the time! Then I upgraded to the state of the art technology at the time: 28.8 modem. :shock:

 

[Gordon]

kirbyultra wrote:

Those were the most awesome computers. System beep. Dos prompt. About 50 pounds of steel.

My first computer was Windows 3.11 for Workgroups, 14.4 baud modem, 4MB of RAM (oh my god) and I don't remember how many MB in HDD but I do remember when they first came out with the CD-R, it was totally unbelievable to fit 700+ MB on a DISC! That laptop of your mom's must have cost her a fortune at the time! Then I upgraded to the state of the art technology at the time: 28.8 modem. :shock:

 

That IBM laptop may have actually been closer to a 1993 or 1992 model, according to my mother. I'll have to take a look at it. She still has it, of course.

I remember the step up to the 28.8 seemed great, and then the 56.6 was state of the art.

It's a cool time to be alive. Hard to keep up, but still cool.

 

[missyscove]

I'm probably going to end up getting a new laptop after windows 7 comes out. I love this one, but it'll probably be it's time after this school year ends.

As for the scanner, she may be able to download a driver online for it to work, have you looked into that? That's what I had to do for my printer and such.

 

[Flash]

I have a Dell Dimension 5100 series and it was great until this year. It crashed 3x and finally I got the Geek Squad to fix it instead of Dell and my memory was toast. He didn't like Dell and suggested Apple Desktop there's hardly any wires and it's expensive and their laptops too.