[Fineus]

Hola all.

I'm looking for a cheap laptop to fulfill the purpose of data storage (and nothing more). The premise being that if I go on a road trip somewhere for photography purposes, I'm going to need to dump the shots somewhere and while I have a large enough data card - it'll be nice to move everything across to a laptop.

To that end I need a laptop with at least 20GB of hard drive space and USB2.0. That's it - no other requirements. It's not for games playing and so on. It would be nice if it started rapidly etc. but I can cope with a little patience and don't want to spend more than about £150.

Any ideas?

[Col. Fishguts]

ebay ?

[Ulala]

Here on campus (Oregon State University) there's some place called surplus that has a bunch of laptops (older mind you, nothing fancy/new) for sale for under or around a couple/few hundred dollars. Know of anything like that near you?

The other thing to do might be to wait in line for two days for a black Friday laptop rebate at Best Buy.

Good luck! 

[Fineus]

While I'm a UK Uni student I don't suppose it could hurt to ask... although our uni doesn't really make use of laptops too much (students are expected to buy their own or use the university desktop machines). I'll ask around though.. that or Ebay (cheers Fishguts ) are the best options at the moment. As I said I'm really not looking to run games on it or anything... though it must be up to running XP!

[Taristin]

Laptops are being made all over that are ~400USD. How far is that from 150GBP? Id send you over to Newegg.com, but it's a US site, and I dont know of overseas variants.

[kasperl]

I think 150GBP would be closer to 300USD, but fair enough.

And if I were you, Thunder, I'd look in a media player that can do USB host instead. Closer to the price range, smaller, quicker to boot, more functions you'll use, less you won't. For example, if you have a camera that uses data cards that fit in a CF adapter, take a look at the Creative Zen Vision.

[Rictor]

If you're looking for storage only, why not get an external hard-drive? I'm pretty sure you can get a decent one over 100 gigs for less than 150 pounds. I even saw an awesome one designed by Porsche, with 80gigs storage and light as a feather. If you think about it, all that extra stuff in the laptop, which you say you don't need anyway, costs quite a bit any way you cut it.

[Fineus]

Kasperl, that's not a bad idea. After all I'm looking for something with a screen and a hard drive - it doesn't matter what it really is and the smaller the better.

Rictor, unfortunately this isn't what I'm looking for here. I don't think the camera will copy across directly to an external hard drive as the hard drive won't have anything to attach to.. I'm looking for something "out in the field" that I can back up to... not a desktop PC attachment.

[Taristin]

Then why not simply get a few 1 GB SD cards? then later use a card reader on your desktop at home to xfer to?

[Fineus]

Laptops are more flashy? Heh... I suppose I'd quite like the option of having one is all...

[Ulala]

They have many convenient features I'm sure he'd like to be able to take advantage of. 

[WMCoolmon]

I'd check if you can run 2000 on it instead. XP has a lot of flashy features that do nothing except slow everything down and burn battery life.

Of course, you can disable those, as 2000 has its own quirks. But, don't lock yourself into an OS unless you have a good reason for doing so, you may find something cheaper that way.

[Windrunner]

buy a dell inspiron 1300 with only 3 month guarantee. they are pretty  cheap and you also get a new laptopn instead buying a refurbished one