My budget is around £150 - £200.

So can any of you peeps point me in the direction of a good cheap lappy or PC?

Frog gave me a link for a cheap lappy a while back...but I can't find it

build it yourself, it's the cheapest way and much easier than you'ld think

Micro-direct

alternatively eBay is even better for getting more for your money

irrepressible wrote:
A 'good' one for 150 - 200 quid?

You might find an old core2duo/amd64 with separate nvidia or ati graphics card for around about that price secondhand.

www.freeads.co.uk/uk/buy__sell/computers...am/view#.UIhxkml25ig

That ones not bad for the price he's asking by the looks.

Thanks mart and andy

What I mean by good, is good enough I only need it for my writing, a fast browser would be good, being able to run Deus Ex and Morrowind well would be a bonus

irrepressible wrote:
The original Deus Ex or the new one?
'cause we're talking at least £200 budget difference to run the new one.

have a scoot round eBay or some other second hand site, computers are good to buy second hand because some people (dipshits) out there just have to have the latest stuff, even though they never used the computer for anything more stressful than playing videos they will rush out and spend a fortune on the latest kit.

The original Deus Ex The old family PC was a Compaq Presario, GeForce4 MX, I think. It could run Deus Ex quite well in 800 x 600 (actually I think it was 600 x 480 ) with medium settings As for Morrowind...the less said about that the better It's not a priority to run a few older games, just would be a nice little bonus.

I'll have a good look around ebay and that, and I'll hopefully find a bargain that will suit my needs perfectly

martg wrote:
What Mart says

You might want to search for 'nvidia' under laptops or ATI, which should land you laptops without the bloody useless built in intel gfx cards.
You could push the boat out and try for XPS or Studio or Alienware but I doubt you'll find an alienware for that price
An older XPS or Dell studio laptop you might get lucky with though...and they're still good enough for games so long as they don't have the intel gfx cards, I would just ignore the ones with intel cards.

G'day Irrepressible.

I'd suggest finding somewhere online like this ...

www.mwave.com.au/system.asp

... where you can pick and choose the parts you'd like to have, all at a reasonably cheap price (compared to retail prices).

irrepressible wrote:
both those games are class, the less said about the new Deus Ex the better, lol

as Andy said, try and avoid built on graphics cards as they are useless, I'd recommend NVidia over ATI
I've had a few of each over the years and NVidia are generally better and ATI tend to be noisy, cheapo plastic fans
plus NVidia have PhysX built on.

If you don't really plan on doing any mobile computing I'd avoid laptops just because of the higher overall price and the batteries usually die after a while.

I might go down the laptop route for now. I don't need a gaming PC. I'll get one of those at some point

As long as I can use it for work, I'll be happy, and it will be temporary anyway just while I get started. I can upgrade in the future, when hopefully I start making money from writing.

What about something like this?;

IBM Lenovo T60 Core Duo Laptop
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0046Z5K2S/r...?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

irrepressible wrote:
specs aren't great for the price, it would struggle to run win 7 let alone anything else

check these out
eBay UK

Quad Core Fx4100 HD Gaming PC 1TB HD 8GB DDR3 MEMORY NVIDIA GT-610 1GB
current bid 1p (£0.01)

Dell Dimension 3.06 ghz processor 1.5 gb ram 80 gb hd windows 7 pro refurbished
current bid 1p (£0.01)


Apple Power Mac G5 Desktop - 1.5gb RAM, 160GB HD and uprated graphics card
current bid 99p (£0.99)

This one is an incredible bargain
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Core-i7-920-Gaming-multimedia-PC-12GB-RAM-W7-ULTIMA-120GB-SSD-300GB-Raptor-1TB-/170930699886?pt=UK_Computing_DesktopPCs&hash
Core i7 920 Gaming / multimedia PC 12GB RAM W7 ULTIMA 120GB SSD 300GB Raptor 1TB
0 bids
£1.00
you could buy that sell on the solid state drive and make enough money for a brand new laptop
PS just checked and it has a top end gaming graphics card included XFX HD 5670 1GB SDDR3 DVI HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
and the seller has 100% positive feedback on nearly 600 items

There are so many cheap pc's that they are very unlikely to go for much more than the asking prices
a weak spec laptop for £120 doesn't seem much of a bargain compared to a top end gaming pc with SSD's for £1

martg wrote:
That looks good

How much do you think I can expect to pay once it gets to the business end of the auction? What's the maximum you'd pay for it?

What kind of monitor would I need for it?

And it say there's no OS installed, so how would I go about buying and installing one of those?

Imagine getting that PC for £10 quid or something

irrepressible wrote:
That's purely down to luck, depending on who's seen the advert and how much they are willing to pay
some people use a program called snipe to automatically put bids on an item just before the time runs out so it's hard to say.
but good quality PC's are there all the time so you could just put a low bid what you want and if you don't get it try another.

I'm not sure what you mean by what kind of monitor, just about any monitor will work, if it's an old CRT one it might have a different connector but there are adapters available.
Check eBay for monitors too, should be able to pick one up for a couple of quid.

personally I would bid on the last link, it has windows 7 ultimate already on it and solid state drives are very expensive, you could sell the SS drive on for at least £50 profit and still keep the 1TB drive already in it.

If you want to get windows 7 ultimate there are cracked copies available on torrents that work fine, including all online updates.
If you are interested I can PM you details of where to find it, how to download it and how to install it
I'd really recommend it over windows XP, it's much better and some newer programs don't seem to like XP

If you wanted a 'proper' copy you could no doubt buy that on eBay too for a few quid

Thanks mart

The last link is collection only, but he'll deliver to within 100 miles. He's dahn in Lahndan though and I'm up in Scouseville. I'll spend a good amount of time scouring ebay, and I'll hopefully find something very good

good luck

irrepressible wrote:


He's in manc by the looks. Not too bad a drive perhaps.

i know fuck all about tech but am jumping into this thread anyway.

irre......writing.....

thats a fucking brilliant idea :thumbs: i can totally get that, you've got the skills good luck! not that i think you'll need it.

Thanks dub

People have said I write well, maybe it's true It's nice to hear, it's a confidence booster

Well I'm going to put a lot of energy into it anyway, see where it leads, how far I can go with it

Oh yeah I forgot to say, the writing was wub's idea, he said he thinks I could do it It's freelance stuff, articles and that. I'll have a good crack at it anyway

ah, i remember summat about wub having some ideas.

fair flipping shout. like i said, you have the skills. could be just whats been waiting for you

irrepressible wrote:
Nice one irre. Some good positive thoughts coming out of here