New Laptop Advice

[MrMan]

Seriously thinking of replacing the HP PC with a laptop, space reasons mainly.

Happy to spend somewhere in the region of £500 and only really need it for internet usage, uploading photos of the kid and using itunes. Heard Toshiba, Acer and Compaq are pretty decent but all advice welcome?

Also, if I can get a few quid for the PC in some cash convertors outlet
or private sale, is there anything I can do to clean it up? I don't want some techy genius getting their hands on it and locating bank details etc.

Cheers

 

[skipper734]

Toshiba Satellite Lots of configurations for under £500.
Take out hard drive and hit very hard with Birmingham screwdriver. (Or purchase clean up program.)

 

[NF9]

Buy a bin with wheels instead

 

[little al]

Toshiba Satellite Lots of configurations for under £500.

Thats what I have got. Cost me £500 18 months ago but I got mine from John Lewis, so can be bought cheaper. Very very happy with it.

 

[Northstander]

Acer, I have one, had no problems and is now i believe the biggest selling Laptop in the uk.

Well...I didnt have problems until I downloaded some good quality Porn

 

[KVLT]

There's no substitute for physically destoying your harddrive. Whatever you do don't rely on sending stuff to the recycle bin as it only frees up the space allocated to the file you're deleting - it doesn't actually delete the file.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

There are some free disk clean up utils on the web that will overwrite all your free hard disk space with the space chr - thus permanently destroying any data that you have previously "deleted" but is still sitting on the drive unindexed. Do a Google for "wipe file" or "disk clean"

 

[Beach Hut]

Both my kids have Toshiba laptops which seem to do what they want to do however having had a Dell laptop for more years than I can care at work they are the dogs bollox.

 

[BensGrandad]

I was told by a man who maintains Surrey Police Computers that it is impossible to permanently delete data from a hard drive. If you took the hard drive out and mutilated it and buried it in cement for 10 years the police could still retrieve the data. Do not know if he was telling the truth or not.

 

[MrMan]

What if I cut the vocal chords of the man who maintains Surrey Police computers, mutilated the hard drive, put it in his pocket and then buried him in cement for fractionally over 10 years? Would that do the job?

 

[Nottseagull]

Doesn't microwaving the hard drive make all data inaccessible?

 

[KVLT]

Doesn't microwaving the hard drive make all data inaccessible?

Or a tasty snack for robots?

 

[bhaexpress]

F.Y.I. Compaq are now owned by HP. Good machines HP but Dells are just as good and usually cheaper. You could always go to PC Pro: UK Computing, PC, Internet, Hardware & Software Reviews to get a decent opinion though.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I was told by a man who maintains Surrey Police Computers that it is impossible to permanently delete data from a hard drive. If you took the hard drive out and mutilated it and buried it in cement for 10 years the police could still retrieve the data. Do not know if he was telling the truth or not.

He's not too far wrong.

 

[clippedgull]

He's not too far wrong.

Is it not possible to incinerate a hard drive?

Other ways include getting a ferry across to France and dropping the hard drive into the sea half way across. Probably won't destroy the data but will be hard to find!

 

[The Great Cornholio]

Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe

Darik's Boot and Nuke is the disk destroyer of choice. It is not true that you can't completely destroy data - you just need to make sure you use an algorithm that overwrites it enough times. If you are really paranoid you can choose the Gutmann option which overwrites 35 times but the Department of Defense standard (7) should suffice.

If you do not delete data and encase a disk in concrete then you probably could get the data back but not if it is overwritten sufficiently well.

 

[bhaexpress]

Acer, I have one, had no problems and is now i believe the biggest selling Laptop in the uk.

Well...I didnt have problems until I downloaded some good quality Porn

Doubt that as I'm sure Dell and HP outsell bearing in mind that most firms use one or the other, never seen an Acer in a work environment. However it may well be the highest retail seller. They're value for money though.

 

[clapham_gull]

I was given a tip and bought a laptop from these people

Cheap Laptop | Cheap PCs | Dell D630 Latitude and Toshiba Laptop Sale

They appear to specialise in Toshiba stuff and I bought one of these

I got it over £100 cheaper than I could anywhere on the net, inclusing the usual cheap suppliers.

They deal in returns and what they technically have to recall "refurbished". Possibly a company ordered the wrong one - open the packaging but sent it right back. Or just sent it back for some reason

I understand they deal directly with Toshiba and re-sell stock that has been returned for whatever reason.

The lap I bought was 100% new, sealed, not a scratch anywhere and had never been opened.

It turned up next working day.

Can't recommend this company enough.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

Another vore for Toshiba Satellite here. Excellent bang for buck. However, if your problem is space, why not just get an external hard drive

 

[Husty]

If you want to destroy your hard drive then microwave the little bugger, but stand well back