I got a laptop! free! :d

DOOManiacDOOManiac Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
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<div class="IPBDescription">Now i what should i do?</div>Last night my boss at work finally did what he'd been promising to do for about 6 months. He gave me his old laptop! FREE! Granted it is a few years old. Presario 1277 with an AMD 433MHZ with only 64MB RAM and a 4gb hard drive to be exact. But who cares, its free! And its fast enough for me since I won't be gaming or anything else on it. heh.

Later i'm going to call Compaq (yes, i know. eww. but hey, FREE) and see what my upgrade options are. I know already that I can get up to 128MB ram put into it (only $40 too!) and today I'm going to go buy a PCMCIA 10/100 net card so I can put this puppy on the lan. I'm not sure if it has a swappable drive thing or not. I know for sure that those have been around for about 6 or 7 years now. I'd like to get a DVD player in this puppy if its economical. And of course a bigger hard drive would be nice if possible. I'm quite sure that I'm stuck though as far as CPU speed goes. Oh well, its free! I'm prolly gonna put about $200 or so max into it...

I do have a few questions though that I'm not sure about, since as I'm sure most of you know laptops are entirely different beasts and are new territory for me.

1 - I'm planning on reinstalling Windows on it (my boss had a ton of crap on there and the system is mega unstable right now due to that), but I'm wondering, do I really need any of the bundled utility crap that comes with compaq's little install package of death? Or can I just put in a clean copy of windows, install the drivers (I already have them), and be done?

There are a few things on here that if on my PC I'd hate but since they are on the laptop I think I'd like to use. Like the OSD (on screen display) for the volume control (you know, green bars onscreen like on TV). Also there are some little start/stop/play/etc buttons that can go into winamp AFAIK. There are also several buttons I have no clue what does, such as a blue up and down arrow below my touchpad that seems to do absolutely nothing, and buttons to the left and right of it. One has an i (I guess browser launch?), the other has magnifying glass (file search? load up google? heh), the other a shopping cart (if this thing has cs i'll throw it out the window...), and the final one an envelope (finally one you can guess! email!). But none of the buttons do anything at all right now. Dunno if they are missing a driver or what.

Also, are there any handy dandy "every-laptop-owner-should-use-this-utility" type apps out there that I should get?

thanks for any help you can give!
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Comments

  • XyberBobXyberBob Join Date: 2002-07-12 Member: 918Members
    Yay!! <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo--> Laptops ownz all <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->, i dont use any special utilities, although i should actually see if there are some, but #######, I have to use this for gaming <!--emo&:(--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':('><!--endemo-->, someone gimme desktop =]
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  • DOOManiacDOOManiac Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
    bragging-filled update time! ^_^

    I went to CompUSA and got a 128MB ram module for $40 so now I got 192MB ram in there! w00t. Also at best buy I picked up a generic (actually d-link, which is just as close to generic heh) PCMCIA 10/100 NIC for $15. Also go pulp fiction and jackie brown collector's editions on dvd as well as dusk till dawn free, but that's off topic ;)

    I formatted it and now have winXP running on it rather than 98. While it just barely meets the min. system requirements for XP, it still goes faster than it was going with 98 heh. w00t to that. plus now there's more security, which for a laptop is a good thing. and it looks sexier. Installed everything else I need. Now all I gotta do is tweak it and I can put it on the shelf and probably never use it again. heh.

    It even runs MAME flawlessly! :D
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  • ScytheScythe Join Date: 2002-01-25 Member: 46NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation, Reinforced - Silver
    You gotta put <a href="http://users.bigpond.net.au/zimbu/doom.html" target="_blank">Legacy Doom</a> on it. That's the only game my dad's laptop can handle decentally.

    Maybe there are some settings in the bios that you can fiddle with to setup those launcher buttons? Check it out. If your not going to put a DVD-Rom drive in it, some good VCD software is a must.

    --Scythe--
    <a href="mailto:the_only_scythe@subdimension.com">the_only_scythe@subdimension.com</a>
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  • DOOManiacDOOManiac Worst. Critic. Ever. Join Date: 2002-04-17 Member: 462Members, NS1 Playtester
    something i've noticed about the monitor is there is kinda a "ghost trail" on it. like when i'm watching a .avi or something whenever there's motion there's almost like a motion blur. i'm almost sure its from the lcd screen not updating fast enough or wahtever. refresh rate is 75 though. anything i can do about this?

    oh and as far as the keys, i don't think they're customizable in any way, but the program that enabled em didn't transfer over anyway so who cares. i don't really need an "internet shopping" button anyway :P

    and i'll check out legacy doom. i hope its better than it was 2 years or so ago, cause it was crap then. crap crap crap. Viva la ZDOOM (except for not working on the laptop).
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