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Expat Country Member
30th Sep 2005, 03:36
Advice please: I need to acquire 3 laptops for my 11, 12 and 13 year old kids, to put an end to the computer wars that now rage 24/7.
I don't want to but "Albert Halls", to satisfy a "garden shed" requirement, but would prefer to be slightly overspec re future potential requirement.

I plan to put in a wireless net, and games must be considered particularly for 13 year old "Kevin"

Any suggestions re spec, gratefully received, plus any specific make/model recommendations for laptops, and also any tips re satisfying this entire project in one hit.

ExpeeCee

BRL
30th Sep 2005, 07:51
Hi there. For young 'Kevin', his graphics card must be at least 128Mb. Anything less will not play the latest games. Also must have at least 512Mb RAM or more. This is absolute minimum spec these days.

Standard kit on most new laptops now is a recordable DVD and at least 40gig hard drive.

I reckon you should walk into your nearest PC shop and ask the manager to cut a deal, £1500 for three lappies, one with the gaming spec noted above and I think you will be sorted.

Let us know what you eventually do and good luck!

Expat Country Member
30th Sep 2005, 09:53
Thanks for that BRL.

I assume I just state that it must have built in "infra Red" for wireless LAN ?

Anything else?

Ex P C

Binoculars
30th Sep 2005, 10:16
A laptop each to stop arguing?

I know this is Computers, not Agony Aunt, but I'd take the one they have got away from them for a few weeks, then tell the spoiled brats that unless they can agree on an arrangement for sharing it you'll sell it. :mad:

Conan the Librarian
30th Sep 2005, 10:19
There may be a little bit of a paradox here, in that whilst it is eminently possible to get cheap lappies, they are geared towards wordy, admin, or netty types of things as opposed to the Formula 1 performance that leading edge games demand. Bleeding edge games won't be a problem.

Laptops that will take todays' and let's not forget -tomorrows or next years games - are available, but they will cost a packet by comparison and even then will have limited (and expensive) upgrade options. These lightning fast lappies also chew up batteries like they are going out of fashion. My own Acer is a 3.0G Pentium 4 and that flattens a big battery in about 45 mins. They are called "Desktop replacements" in the trade. Such a device ain't much cop for school or college.

Two things I would consider, might go something like this. Either two laptops and one "Gaming" desktop (Much cheaper and easier to upgrade as well) or even three laptops and a dedicated "Gamer" like a Playstation or whatever.


Final tip? Never trust a salesman. Get printed matter, so that if your machine does not live up to expectation (Really thinking battery life here) you can point to it. Claiming that a slaes person had told you A,B, or C will get you a shrug and nothing else.


Conan

TheOddOne
30th Sep 2005, 10:27
'Infra Red' amd 'Wireless' are 2 different technologies. You need to specifically state that you want the machine to actually contain a wireless card or have it built-in to the board. or processor. We bought an Intel Centrino machine which had it all built in but the other so-called 'wireless-enabled' machine we got had to make do with a PCMCIA card, which is a bit clunky - it sticks out the side of the machine.

I think most current laptops on sale (in the UK at least) have wireless working straight out of the box.

We have a wireless LAN for 4 machines using an Internet connection via our Cable TV supplier. The wireless router just plugs into the back of the Cable box under the telly. No problems with all of us accessing the net at once. We also have a single wireless printer centrally located in the house. Every now & again we get the pounding of footsteps coming down the stairs to grab what they've printed. The laptops save a huge amount of space in their rooms and they can take them round their mates' place if they want too.

The school they go to automatically assumes they're going to do at least some of their homework using a computer, though it's nice to see them still doing stuff in the old way in an exercise book!

I'll agree the minimum spec is 128Mb graphics & 512 Meg RAM & 40Gb hard drive, though we've just filled up one of those on a laptop - mixture of digital pix & iTunes stuff - so bigger is better. Processor speed doesn't seem to matter above about 1.5GHz.

BTW, we invested in the insurance - might seem like a lot but laptop repairs are quite expensive.

Cheers,
The Odd One

Conan the Librarian
30th Sep 2005, 11:08
Just following on from The Odd One. Insurance is a brilliant idea. Chances of one laptop in a teenagers hands, being dropped/nicked/screwed or otherwise compromised is three times higher for you!

A way of getting over the smaller hard disks on laptops and especially given that you plan on a wireless network, is an external network hard drive. They are up to 450GB in size and the users keep their own portion of the disk. That, is very cheap insurance in itself.

With all the data whizzing around your network, don't go for anything less than a 108MB/Sec transfer time. If you go for 54MB sec it will slow down quite a lot if everyone is using at the same time.

Conan

Genghis the Engineer
30th Sep 2005, 16:00
At that age, whatever they get, it'll be obsolete by the time they leave home.

Laptops are roughly double the price, probably four times the price to upgrade or fix, and don't last any longer. They are also much more fragile, and I know how much my kids looked after things when they were in their early teens.

So, my opinion, for what it's worth, is go chequebook in hand, to your local "big name" PC distributor (PC world, dixons, etc.) and say you want three identical games-spec PCs, and are not spending a penny more than absolutely necessary.

I did something similar about a year ago when my, Mrs.G and G.Jr all decided we needed new PCs - got three high spec machines (admittedly without monitors) AND a 3-year on-site warranty for £350 each from PC World. I'll admit that Packard Bell isn't necessarily the best make in the world, but it's good enough, and when 16Yo G.Jr decided to upgrade his PC himself without consulting anybody and fried the motherboard a few weeks ago, the warranty people sent somebody out to replace it free of charge (and did his upgrade properly whilst here) in about 4 days.

That said, if you are set on Laptops, I've had a couple of desktops and a laptop over the last few years from here (http://uk.insight.com/index.php) and the price and initial service have been excellent. After-sales has been pretty reasonable - although not necessarily world class.

G

Secretly agreeing with Binoculars.

Gouabafla
30th Sep 2005, 16:28
I agree with Ghengis. Laptops are a pain in the bum. I use one all the time, but only because I have to move around. On the desk next to me in our home office is a desktop we have had for five years. During that time we have upgraded just about everything at one time or another, so it is effectively a new-ish desktop, but we have never a one-off heavy financial outlay. On the other hand, I'm on my third laptop in the same time. None of the laptops have ever had the power or versitility of the desktop and it is very rare that I can do the repairs myself on laptop hardware, but I can take the desktop apart very happily.

If you don't need to move around, get a desktop.

seacue
1st Oct 2005, 00:46
"It's none of my business but that never stopped me."

Remember that the 12-yr-old will be 13 next year and probably of the gamer mentality of present 13 yo. and the 11 yo .......... Buying for this year, not for next year and the next would seem to ensure rapid replacement. But laptops will be out-of-date pretty fast.

Desktops are so much cheaper and are upgradable that you'd have to do a lot of talking to convince me that laptops make sense.

That said, I use a low-end laptop as my main machine - 512 Mby RAM, 40 Gby HD, but always use an external mouse. I like the fact that its fan is much quieter than my old desktop. I use an external keyboard when at home. So there's still a bit of clutter and wiring. It would be entirely inadequate for gaming. My use is net access and software development. Neither strain the display. A desktop w/ LCD display wouldn't take much more desk space
and would be a lot more durable.

Buy desktops today. Save enough money to buy laptops later when mobility is important. You'll probably find you'll only want to buy one laptop a year as the kids get old and hand-me-down the older ones. A laptop bought today will be graded "useless" by your older kids three years from now.

sc

Saab Dastard
1st Oct 2005, 19:23
I would agree with the general concensus that desktop PCs are a more robust solution for teenagers.

A few suggestions:

If you buy 3 identical PCs, you can save yourself a good deal of time and effort by also investing in Ghost or similar disk cloning software. Not only can you set all of them up the same (locked down ;-) ) but storing an "as first built" image is a great way to cure problems later! You will need to obtain SYSprep for MS to do this properly.

My children are younger than yours (9 & 6), so they are lowly users - don't give admin rights unless your children are responsible, PC literate young adults! If that's not a contradiction in terms! (Actually I had to downgrade my wife to User-only, after she downloaded a dodgy screen-saver :rolleyes: ).

Work out in advance how you want to "Police" internet usage - as well as being able to block domains in your firewall you might consider Net Nanny type of software.

Consider some form of anti-spam product. And ensure that MS updates are applied regularly (I don't advocate autoupdate - blind faith in MS... no thanks!)

Antivirus is critically important - make sure it is maintained up to date (auto-update if possible), has on-the-fly protection and schedule a daily sweep. Don't let it be disabled!

One really useful piece of software I have is Virtual CD - saves having stacks of CDs being popped in and out for each and every game.

Perhaps most important is to educate your children (as long as you can stay one step ahead!) so that they become responsible netizens and computer users.

I am convinced that in the not-too-distant future it will be necessary to have insurance and even take a test to operate an internet-connected PC. As society becomes ever more dependent on the internet for communications, e-commerce and "identity management", people will be sued for negligently allowing unprotected PCs to be used as zombies for cybercrime. A bit like drink-driving, or knowingly passing on HIV.

Maybe I'm paranoid...



SD

Expat Country Member
2nd Oct 2005, 07:01
Thanks Everybody for the advice. I am collating it to arrive at a combination spec!!!

Reason for laptops:
a) Portability
b) Space

We are living in UAE and they need to travel with them for extended Summer holidays in UK.

Virtual CD - sounds interesting, please expand a little.

Parenatal (<< Interesting word !!)control - we actually have a Government one here which forbids me to search for MiddleSEX !!! However, teeneters manage to get around it!!

Does anyone have a spacebar tab for an Amilo Fujitsu Siemens - I am reluctant to purchase a new keyboard for what is a 3 year old laptop, and someone might have an expired one that they can rob and put it in the post - Cheeky, I know, but if you don't ask etc etc

ExPat

Saab Dastard
2nd Oct 2005, 16:56
What voltage is UAE electricity supply? You don't want to fry the LTP power supplies...

Virtual CD is a program that allows you to create as many virtual CD drives as you have available drive letters (E - Z). You can also create image files of actual CDs (be warned - they are the same size as the CD contents). You then load the virtual CD into the Virtual drive and Hey Presto! you can install and run the game.

It is possible to automate this (batch file in the startup folder), but I have not found a way to automate the unload - again a batch file - as I found it did not work using the "Run at Log off" in Win XP.

Anyhow, it works for the vast majority of games CDs that my children use.

I classify game CDs into 3 kinds: Those that I can simply copy to the hard drive and install & run from there; those that work with Virtual CD and finally those that neither approach works for. Unfortunately, this last is becoming increasingly common as copy protection is becoming more sophisticated. I don't want to copy the CD in breach of copyright, but I do want a 3 year old to be able to just click and play, not have to eject and install CDs!

It really p1sses me off that usability comes a poor second in the eyes of the game manufacturers - and the number of children's games that require administrator level access to run is an absolute disgrace!

SD

Expat Country Member
3rd Oct 2005, 06:04
Dastard

Thanks for that.

Electricity is 240. (standard sockets are UK spec, but many appliances are sold with 2 pin round plugs - beats me!!)

Water is H2O

Petrol is 90p a Imp gall

IT support is not what I got used to working in the UK - can be very frustrating

E P M