Budget computers

[Gray]

At the moment my nephew is living with us for an extended period of time, he uses my computer at the moment which is in my room, but it's not ideal.

When it was his birthday a few days ago, i was under the assumption that one of my brothers was going to build him up a laptop, since all it supposedly needed was a hard drive, but it seemed that was a pipe-dream and it never happened.

Today my mum seen something in one of the papers which had 3 websites for budget computers, which are between £100 and £150, for those on any types of benefits. She would be eligable because of the pension stuff, so spending £100 or so could be worthwhile.

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I checked the sites in question, and admittedly the middle one ticked the boxes for me.

15' LCD monitor
40gb hard drive
1gb memory
Pentium 4 2ghz
Windows 7
Plus all the other accessories like mouse, keyboard, cd rom etc

All that for essentially £95, which sounds like a huge bargain.

The only downside is, its a desktop PC, because it will be "his", i'd feel much more comfortable if it was a laptop. Alas it isn't...

So before i take the plunge, does anyone know if there is any budget laptops for a similar price along with spec?

 

[Ch3tan]

Have a look on ebuyer etc first, sure you can probably get a LOT better spec for only a little more spend.

Also, why not ask your brother for that laptop and see if you can replace the HDD?

 

[Bob007]

BigPockets.co.uk :: Laptops :: Blank Media, CD-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, Dual Layer, Media Players, DVD Cases, Epson, HP, Canon, Cartridges, Free Delivery

 

[dysfunction]

Buy Cheap Desktops PCs & Monitors at Morgan Computers

 

[Kryten]

Look up ict-direct.co.uk - often do Core2Duo kit for around the 150 mark. I certainly wouldn't touch a P4 because you can ALWAYS get core2duo kit second hand/refurbed for less than you have. The difference between the two is night and day.

 

[Keitanz]

Crystal Technology Ltd: Computer Systems

I REALLY recommend the Crystal Advance, find me a better PC for cheaper and I'll.........

 

[Kryten]

It's not exactly a decent PC though is it.

Case & PSU they use £25.
Motherboard £30
Processor £38
Ram £27
HDD £25
DVDRW £12

£157 if you build that yourself with off-the-shelf retail prices. They'll be getting the parts for around £120 - it's all worthless.

It's about the equivelent of an intel celeron D (socket 775 versions) - frankly if you look around you'll get a core2duo for a similar price that will wipe the floor with it.

 

[Gray]

Necro!

So patience was rewarded a few weeks ago and we finally got the laptop from my brother, set it up all nicely.

Not the best laptop (Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Pro v2000 for interested parties) however it does the basic job which is all i can ask for.

Was quite content with it because it finally mean't he was off my computer and downstairs in the living room under the watchful eye of mother-dearest. However it seems he has been doing all he can to wind her up with it (She says!) by pressing the buttons down hard and fluctuating the volume level on the laptop.

While it was downstairs this mean't that he would leave the laptop downstairs at bedtime, and thus, i could go down when i wanted and use it too.

She's fed up now though and brought the laptop upstairs in his room, so bugger that i think! It's going back downstairs in a few days once i sort stuff out!

In the meantime however, the laptop is upstairs. I'm not having him staying on the laptop til stupid-o'clock (And being like me) so i want to restrict his internet access to make sure he isn't on it all night. However i don't know how to do this on the router.

I'm using a Virgin Superhub and i only want to temporarily restrict access, not permanently remove him from it (To assure i don't have to go through re-setting it up).

Anyone know what options i would have to take to do this?

 

[caLLous]

How do I restrict access to superhub at certain ti... - Help & Support Forum

Worth a try.

 

[Gray]

Bah stupid thing, i was checking through the settings and i seen the IP Filtering, but it wasn't working. Then i did the same for MAC too.

Sure enough one line caught my eye, the internal clock on the Superhub is one hour behind due to GMT, soon as i fixed it voila.

 

[Gray]

Quick update again.

Virgin Superhub is shit , even done a search for it, and its something they have been aware of since beginning of the year - maybe even longer.

But you can't actually put restrictions on anything that goes past midnight the following day, for instance i wanted:

10:30pm (9:30pm on Superhub)
to
8:30am (7:30am on Superhub)

However you get slapped with an error saying "Status: Invalid Time Range. Please make sure end time is later than or equal to the start time."

Whats more, you can't even make two MAC filters for the same MAC address, so you couldn't have 10:30pm > 11:59pm and then 12:00am > 8:30am for instance.

Sigh.

 

[MYstIC G]

Doesn't Doze come with built in (or part of live pack) parental controls?

 

[Jupitus]

Doesn't Doze come with built in (or part of live pack) parental controls?

... which any 13 year old can disable within minutes, probably