Lifehack: how to get a fast laptop for cheap

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › Lifehack: how to get a fast laptop for cheap

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#1239389 15-Feb-2015 14:56

+1 for this thread

2core duos work really well and can be had for cheap. Make sure you choose a model of laptop that's solidly built, still has good reasonable battery life and has plenty of online support in the form of easy to find driver downloads or Linux install guides. My old Lenovo x200 ticks all those boxes.

I also suggest some HP models as spares are easy to source (empr)

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#1239396 15-Feb-2015 15:10

There is a small limitation I realised, other than hardware that are nearing end of life,

These rigs areRAM limited :( my bios can only recognise 2.86gb of any ram

Jase2985

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#1239415 15-Feb-2015 16:09

are you sure its the bios?

not that you are running a 32bit operating system?

32bit os can only see ~3gb of ram, 64bit can see a tonne more than your motherboard can support

surfisup1000

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#1239431 15-Feb-2015 16:43

In general true but some things.

You need a sata connector so the notebook can't be too old.

Drivers can be tricky on old laptops with latest os. eg, trying to get fingerprint scanner working on my t400 was not easy and even now not quite right.

And, memory, some older laptops don't support much memory.

But, I have a 2008 t400 with an SSD and upgraded wifi card and runs like a champ. It is better than most of the rubbish they sell in HN/DSE/NL etc...

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#1239457 15-Feb-2015 17:05

Jase2985: are you sure its the bios?

not that you are running a 32bit operating system?

32bit os can only see ~3gb of ram, 64bit can see a tonne more than your motherboard can support

Yes

Stu

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#1239514 15-Feb-2015 18:12

Running well on my old HP 6710b with 4GB RAM. Even the fingerprint scanner worked without having to muck around hunting for drivers, unlike with 8.1 on the same machine.

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

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#1239527 15-Feb-2015 18:43

Ive been running 8.1 on a samsung evo in my aging vista era HP dv6 for some time, works great.

As for the free argument on machines i abuse daily i reformat approx every 90 days anyway (everything is stored on NAS)
So the 90 day enterprise evaluation works great.

kendo

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#1258255 14-Mar-2015 09:45

I might do this, how stable is the preview though? Laptop isnt my main computer though

MadEngineer

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#1258315 14-Mar-2015 12:44

joker97:
Jase2985: are you sure its the bios?

not that you are running a 32bit operating system?

32bit os can only see ~3gb of ram, 64bit can see a tonne more than your motherboard can support

Yes

that ram limit is total ram, including video memory.

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#1259475 14-Mar-2015 20:31

kendo: I might do this, how stable is the preview though? Laptop isnt my main computer though

other than IE11 behaving like IE11 would no problems so far. not even one crash. that can't be said about my win 8.1, but my win 8.1 is the workhorse

JaseNZ

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#1259492 14-Mar-2015 21:13

Yup I bought this for what I thought was cheap. Put an ssd in it and win 10 and wham bam thank you ma'am having fun playing around.

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#1259514 14-Mar-2015 21:35

You can also lifehack this in the same way if you want a cheap small form factor PC, such as for putting beside a TV for watching lightbox or similar. You should easily be able to do it for under $100 without the SSD. The only issue is that the previiew version of windows 10 will only last until the end of the year, depending on when they release the full version.

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#1259529 14-Mar-2015 22:31

joker97: get any old cheap laptop, core2duo and above

replace with cheap SSD (mine is a very fast 1st gen - OCZ vertex 2 120 gb that cost me $900 at that time)

install Windows 10 Technical Preview [free]

= very very very fast laptop

yee ha

Make sure you have the latest firmware for that vertex2 if you haven't already - they had that nasty bug where they would shutdown fine then just not detect the next power up (particularly from sleep mode).

Had one vertex2 that was replaced numerous times under warranty only for the replacement to suffer the same issue was almost comical in the end we refused to take an OCZ drive as a replacement.

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#1259555 15-Mar-2015 07:59

This happened with the Crucial C300 as well. I actually got one years ago and had it replaced under warranty last year because of this.

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#1259566 15-Mar-2015 09:50

i have updated the firmware of my OCZ Vertex 2 twice ... glad it didn't happen to me. Haven't looked for any later updates (did one end of last year) ...

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