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So I bought a used laptop ...

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by HandsomeHarley, Dec 31, 2008.

  1. HandsomeHarley

    HandsomeHarley Well-Known Member

    Big mistake.

    My wife has been bugging me for a laptop. She's going to begin working on her Master's and wanted to be able to use the computer without booting the fam off the desktop. Oh, and she wanted wireless Internet.

    The school district here had a big blowout sale, used laptops for $200. She wanted one, so I relented.

    Then we bought a router ...

    Then we realized we needed to but a USB card ...

    Now we find out that the however-many-hundred thousand KB of RAM in the laptop isn't enough.

    Needless to say, Mrs. Harley is pissed. And depressed. And we're out about $300. :-\

    There are Internet icons on the laptop already, one being Firefox, so I figure SOMEBODY had to have Internet on this damn thing before. It's not a bad little laptop (Windows 2000 isn't my cup of tea, but it could be worse -- it could be a Mac). ;)

    Do I keep pouring money into this thing (buy more RAM), hoping that one day it will have Internet? :-\
     
  2. Smasher_Sloan

    Smasher_Sloan Active Member

    What he said. You can get a brand new, warranty-covered decent machine for under $500 these days.
     
  3. nmmetsfan

    nmmetsfan Active Member

    Buying a used computer is like buying a lottery ticket. If you can afford to write it off as a total loss, you might get lucky. But don't bank on it.
     
  4. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    HH,

    So what is the problem? You can't get it to work with the wireless?

    Before you punt the $300, I would take it to some computer place and ask what it would take to get it to do what you want.
     
  5. HandsomeHarley

    HandsomeHarley Well-Known Member

    We bought the router and card, and everything installed properly. But a message came up that said You have acess, but you do not have the Internet.

    There were Internet icons on the desktop, so I assume they had it at some point in time, even with the low RAM. But when I clicked on the icons, it came back with the "cannot load page" screen.

    Anyhow, I called tech support and they told me I need at least 128 MB of RAM to run the Internet.
     
  6. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    I might price that before you punt then but maybe ask if there might be any other problems to anticipate.
     
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