COLD

No 1tb SSD
No 980ti in sli
No backlit keyboard
No blu-ray rw

For 75 quid that would be the least I was expecting

Another good for running notepad.exe and calc.exe deal :wink:

This isn't a refurbished laptop. It's a heavy used, old, beaten and scratched piece of crap with dead battery worth £45 on Gumtree.

Cold.. The seller has VERY bad customer service imo.... bought a laptop,it was 'delivered' to neighbour (trusted neighbour,they did not sign for it..A fake signature turned up so according to them it had been 'delivered' and they wouldn't help any further) ...customer service refused to make a claim with parcelforce or investigate or help/refund or anything!!

Expect Battery Life might be a problem

Looking at the listing:
What does a Tested & Working battery mean?
A Tested & Working battery is guaranteed to work for a minimum of 10 minutes upon arrival, however, in most cases batteries do last longer than this

Another good for running notepad.exe and calc.exe deal :wink:

Think that's great for just Web surfers

COLD

No 1tb SSD
No 980ti in sli
No backlit keyboard
No blu-ray rw

For 75 quid that would be the least I was expecting

To be fair single thread performance isnt terrible.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+N620+Dual-Core

Cold.. The seller has VERY bad customer service imo.... bought a laptop,it was 'delivered' to neighbour (trusted neighbour,they did not sign for it..A fake signature turned up so according to them it had been 'delivered' and they wouldn't help any further) ...customer service refused to make a claim with parcelforce or investigate or help/refund or anything!!

Appologies if daft question - does it have an HDMI port to connect to TV?

decent enough laptop but £20 more will buy you a far better Ex-Corp E6410 i5 laptop on ebay...

This isn't a refurbished laptop. It's a heavy used, old, beaten and scratched piece of crap with dead battery worth £45 on Gumtree.

Expect Battery Life might be a problem lol

less than 10% of Laptops leave the home

Hot from me on price. Bought the OH a similar laptop four months ago from same seller and it works perfectly and she's very happy with it.

its a work laptop.

It's not even suitable for browsing, this will lag and freeze and destroy the experience on any media rich website

Very cheap

4gb ram and 1tb harddrive for £114.99. Awesome!!

Usable spec and should be reasonably rugged being a work laptop. Hot.

I bought a Dell E6420 back in November from these guys and the power adapter didn't work correctly and wouldn't charge the battery. I sent them a email and 2 days later they sent out a new battery and power adapter without asking for the others back. Had no hassle from customer service I received. Maybe I was just lucky. Recently put a SSD in move and now it flies.

I work for HP and we used to use these for employee standard kit. They are more than adequate for web browsing and working with microsoft office etc. Some of the comments above about it only being good for notepad.exe sounds like a ten year old. A Pentium 486 could run notepad.

Anyone else miss Gorillas game in DOS 5 ??

A Pentium 486 ? Was that as good as an Athlon K6?

No one can complain a decent spec laptop at lower than supermarket prices, yes it's used but come one even if the battery is cack it's a great price for a space saving desktop replacement.

A laptop of this spec is still fine for shopping, office, simple gaming (get DOSbox and plenty of torrents for some awesome DOS games), movies, torrent machine, cctv and lots more.

The only thing it's not gonna do is latest games nd high scores running endless benchmarks!!

Anyone saying this won't even handle websites is just having a laugh, plenty of websites on shared servers are running with less resources per site than this machine.

Also could make a great machine for the x86 Android release due soon

this is just borderline to play WoW. mmm....

There's plenty of better options for a little more through that seller.

hey there ... bought one of these 4 college ... perfect thx OP .. cheapest battery i see is £ 20 ... do u know a better place to buy? mny thx

Ordered thx OP ... this is exactly the kind of machine that an SSD will do wonders for ... will wait for a 240gb @ £40

Also it comes with 64bit pro OS so will support 8gb RAM and get the free win 10 upgrade

4gb memory modules on amazon £14 each .... but may not work with the original 2gb memory stick

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005LDLV6S?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_3&smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

Just need to find a battery cheaper than £20 now

Very happy ... perfect for an aging hippy going back to college :smiley:

Don't get this, the price is good but the performance is shocking. I have this model through work and if you want more than 4 processes running at once it slows up. also terrible at rendering websites, display is fuzzy and it's so heavy. avoid at all costs!

6 cell £9.79 dlvd ex-UK http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/262052392211
9 cell £11.20 dlvd ex-UK http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231645267136

Do the free upgrade to Windows 10 and this will do the job for most users. Considering this comes with latest MS operating system and has 12 months warranty its a bargain.

Bought a laptop from these guys a few months ago and it has been excellent. Battery tested to 7+ hours (not this model obvs, but still an older device).

You can even speak to actual human beings working at this company :smiley:

I could kiss you ... thankyou so much :smiley:

Memory 2 customer-accessible/upgradable
memory module slots (both slots
are customer-accessible)
√ √ √ √
Supports up to 8GB √ √ √ √
Supports the following DDR3,
PC3-12800 configurations at 1600-
MHz in all supported countries and
regions:
√ √ √ √

from downloaded manual

video on replacing the RAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8PtJyfQoA

Yes, you are right. I remembered the wrong model no.

Just checked, 6455b comes with 1333Mhz DDR3 support max 4GB per slot.

thankyou ... the amazon ddr3 memory will work tho, after removing the 2gb ddr2 ..... have also ordered a 500gb seagate hybrid drive from china for £38 (only one left :disappointed:) and a new 9 cell battery for £12 ..... so to summarise I will have a 64 bit windows 10 laptop with 8gb 1600mhz ram with a 500gb hybrid drive with a v large battery capacity, 512 mb dedicated gfx and a nice amazon carry case for .... £170 ... compare that to the £300 pentiums that are the norm and im very happy .... plus today is my birthday :smiley:

You do know nowadays you can get Probook 450 G2 with i5 5200U, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD for £300 brand new.

Only people who do not know what to buy would pay £300 for a Pentium Probook nowadays, unless the laptop has something else special.

alternatively, you could get Lenovo business laptop with i3-4030U, with SSD, 4GB RAM brand new for £280, or 8GB RAM for £290.

Both of them are brand new business laptop, similar quality as this Probook, but newer technology, as better CPU, faster RAM, sata iii instead of sata ii. This will be important if intended to swap for SSD. USB 3.0 etc.


Although they only comes with windows 8.1 Home, not windows 7 professional.

Some people bought them and confirmed that they are good quality. Seems only windows downgraded to home edition, the same specs with windows professional cost £50 more.

If you only want to spend £100, this deal is not bad at all depend on the conditions of the laptop.

Although you plan to replace with 1600Mhz RAM and hybrid hard drive,

I wish to remind you the limit of the laptop, it only support SATA II, and RAM will be running at 1333Mhz.

States comes with Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit ... which will upgrade to w10 pro .... if its anything different then it has been misadvertised

Thanks for all your input ... it is appreciated ... to someone like me to get all this for £180 is amazing and the extra £120 for a new one is a a massive difference for me ... it will just be for web and office and in bag for college and if it plays 'This War Of Mine' ok (which a £900 surface pro doesnt) I will be ecstatic :smiley: I know a bit about sata2 vs sata 3, as i swapped out my ps4 drive, and the ps4 is sata2 only... from what i can see a hybrid drive is the perfect combo of speed vs storage vs price ... as an ssd would be compromised by sata 2 ... if the machine ends up how i think it might , and i have worked with probooks in my job... im going to be very happy ... sure its AMD ... but its a high clock dual core rather than a low clock quad core which is better for single core apps etc ... time will tell ... ive maybe taken a risk, but im feeling confident... but then it hasnt arrived yet :wink:

Probook 450 G2 has many different versions. With even the exact same specs, some are Windows 8.1 Home, some are Windows 7 Professional. Windows 7 Professional normally £50 more expensive compare to the Windows 8.1 Home version with the same specs.

Just in case you found the trolls comment withers your good intent to help others, I found your comment very helpful, thankyou Adrian

another reason this is a good deal, my devils advocate :smiley: thankyou again

Does anyone know if I can install Windows XP on this model? I'm getting seemingly conflicting info depending on which documentation I read!

Does anyone know if this laptop works with a wired internet connection and not just wireless; i.e. does it have a internet cable slot? Thanks!

gigabit, interesting...

Great. Thank you!

Ethernet Marvell 88E8059 10/100/1000
network interface card (NIC)

I haven't seen anything to suggest that Windows 10 will adversely affect performance.
TechSpot.com

HP laptops are crappppppp... No wonder im seeing hp laptops on sale EVERYWHERE

Bought one of these new couple years back. Hard drive packed up 2nd day with blue screen on. Had it returned. Although £75 would get you a decent 7" tablet so perhaps bargain compared to that.
I would not expect much.

I totally agree. People who make daft comments like that forget that these were suitable for websites back in 2009 when Flash was still heavily in use on a large number of websites. These days, with websites being lighter thanks to HTML5 and the fact that many sites are built so they run just as smoothly on small mobile devices as desktop operating systems.

These can also work for productivity applications because many people don't even run the latest so are quite possibly still running versions from around 2010, which these happily ran back then.

Just manage the system properly and don't bloat it with nonsense that may be inadvertently downloaded from dodgy sites.

I know people running laptops on XP with lower specs than these and their systems run fairly decently. Besides, who says that anyone buying one of these needs to stick with Windows 7? Linux anyone?

Would you mind reporting back with your impressions when you have the machine? Especially when you've upgraded to w10 (which I urge you not to do, by the way)

sure thing ... I did buy 3 of those £40 linx 7" w8.1 tablets for people for presents

sure thing ... I did buy 3 of those £40 linx 7" w8.1 tablets for people for presents and upgraded all 3 to w10 ... you might be surprised to know that w10 runs better on those that w8 did ... they only have 1gb (1000mb) ram, and when w10 is running it uses areound 630 -700mb of that, leaving around 300mb free for apps before windows starts paging out to the hard drive and the system grinds to a halt ... really dont think windows should be sold on 1gb ram machine ...2gb makes all the difference ... but anyways I digress ... windows 8.1 before the upgrade was using around 800gb of ram, so 100- 200 more than windows 10, and windows 10 runs faster on the tablet than w8 becuase of that ... it seems to me that w10 needs a less powerful system than w8, and the days of needing more power everytime ms release a new os may be over ... that is my impression before i receive and upgrade this machine ... I may well be wrong, but that is my experience so far ... will report back when the machine is all sorted, but my hybrid harddrive is coming from china so the machine wont be finalised for a couple of weeks ... i will only be using it for web office and very light gaming, and something to take out and about

I'm intrigued to see how the upcoming Remix OS (android ported to PC) would run on something of this spec. Could be perfect for my workplace where we need some simple web terminals for training (everything is web-based without flash). Could be a cheap way to kit out our new training suite.

These are built like a tank and that's good specs for the price. Stick Plex Server on it and shove it somewhere out of sight. Reliable media server you can connect to remotely and run (legal) torrents to. No brainer for me = HOT.

That's the opposite of my experience so I'd love to get more feedback here

I got this once same spec and everything. Absolute pile they sent me. Grubby well used laptop with boot errors. A broken battery lock and the screen stopped working after 10 minutes. There advice was to take the battery out. How it's broken. Managed to pry it open slightly to break the connection briefly and it came back to life. This was a very old laptop on its last legs. I would stay away. But that's just me. I sent it back.

or simply just initiated a charge back via their card issuer :laughing:

Regarding the hybrid drive, don't forget you can swap out the dvd drive for a hdd caddy. I did that with my e6420, stuck a cheap new sandisk ssd in the main bay and a 640gb drive out of an old external. The caddy cost about a fiver. So if go for the 500gb version but put an ssd as the boot drive.

WOW you joined FIVE YEARS AGO and have only posted TWO deals, what a total leech you are to the entire community!

Agree, I'm still using the grade C elitebook 6930p that I bought from schtrade 2+ years ago, £40 delivered and all it needed was a couple of keyboard keys (had a charger already).
There used to be loads of deals from schtrade, they still have decent stock, maybe see if there's any discount codes available.

Seems like a decent spec to replace the aging laptop my wife is still using; an extra fiver for 4GB RAM seems money well spent and will probably add another £20 to change the HDD for an SSD.

Even though Parcelforce 24 Hour delivers to my Highland postcode not even an option, so COLD!

Anyone bought a 2gb one and wants the 2gb thats gonna come out of mine? I have bought an 8gb kit so the original 2gb will be spare ... free to first responder ... this is assuming of course that i dont have to send the laptop back, its not here yet ... if you already ordered the 4gb verson your memory slots will already be full as I mailed them and they said 4gb = 2 x 2gb

Checked in to see if anyone's got there's, but the price has now changed to £299.99 for any spec. :disappointed:

Saved in eBay. Wenry to buy & its now £299.99 for the base model!!

went*

Got mine today. A bit battered, and one screw was within a turn of falling out, but it works and the battery appears to have 2.5 hrs of charge left. Best of all I paid £79 and it has 4 gb RAM and 320 gb HDD, so quite pleased so far...

I paid just £135 for the latest model HP Probook i3 450 laptop. Got a couple at different times - the offer comes up all the time.

You boys should research the HP cashback threads on HUKD.

plenty of threads tell you how eg http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-probook-450-intel-core-i3-5010u-4gb-500gb-15-6-419-98-possible-150-after-cashback-2288651

SCHTrade are no longer what they used to be. Now they are selling grade C laptops (fit for scrap) for >£100. Zero guarantee, no returns. Utterly crazy.

bit battered/dirty .. i too got 4gb & 320gb hd (hitachi) ... mine is being replaced as some keys on the kb dont work ... but I upgraded mine to win10 pro x64 before i noticed and windows activated ok (on 1st upgrade be sure to 'keep everything', otherwise it overwrites your win7 activation key rather than pasing it to w10) ... processor seems good and w10 is responsive ... the shape the laptop is in does take you back a bit on first opening (they must be 4 or 5 years old and well used) but the laptop does work well ... This War of Mine is only just playable unfortunately, so FTL it is then heheh ... i think w10 has less features/apps installed as standard, after an hour or so of use it does run well on this laptop ... wont be testing it more until the replacement arrives

One nice thing i noticed, i have 2 x 4gb ram sticks to put in, one goes in under a door on the bottom of the laptop (same with hard drive) the other has to go in under the keyboard (maintenance manual pdf online which details replacing every part) ... but the nice thing is keyboard removal looks like its easy ... 3 screws on the underside and 4 button catches ontop ... hopefully ram upgrade will be a cinch, and the ram will also be be faster (although this doesnt make much of a difference in windows)

Dont worry have read the thread now ... thx

i still own a 6930p elitebook from schtrade bought as grade c about 2 years ago had a dead button on track pad was a easy fix, but they had the cheek to ask for it back after i had owned it a month saying the plastic was to dangerous as it was chipped on the screen bezel a bit lol, i never did send it back it only cost me £35 delivered bargain

Is it easy to get the i3? What's the catch

That was the old SCHTrade - check out their prices for grade C laptop now, best be seated when you do. All retailers have jacked up their prices of these grade c refrb laptops, it's better to get a new one from John Lewis for a little more with 2 years guarantee. They may be consumer grade but they WILL last 2 years atleast or you get your money back/free repair. SCHTrade can shove their overpriced laptops up their C's.

blah blah blu ray blah blah SSD blah blah at least i've kissed a girl

Yeah but your sister doesn't count and isn't legal!

yep

I have been really lucky ... the replacement laptop turned up yesterday, as my original had unworking kb keys ... whereas my first one looked like it had been used and chucked around every day for 5 years, the replacement is really really nice ... like buying an old laptop off a mate that has looked after it ... night and day and im so so pleased with the replacement, as I have spent another £80 buying parts for it, everything works and it is clean and unbattered, with just the battery release catch missing (not a problem)... the 8gb ram (2x4 - £29) from amazon went in in 5 mins and works perfectly, although it is 1600mhz ram it looks like it might be running at 1066mhz ... so maybe save some cash if you can get older memory ... upgrade to win10 went well with 3 uninstalled drivers showing in device manager (think 2 of these might be resolved by installing win7 drivers for Ricoh card reader from the 6455b hp download page, but I am yet to resolved this fully) ... w10 was unresponsive after upgrading from win7 (have had the same problem with w8.1), but a CLEAN w10 install (dont do this unless you know what you are doing, if you do it wrong it is possible to lose your win7 license and w10 wont activate) has completely resolved that issue. The 9 cell £12 battery from ebay works a treat although it is advertised as 7800Mah, HP battery manager says its 6800Mah (the original batt is around 5400mah i think) ... and on first test I got 2.5 hours from it watching a film in vlc ... its bigger than the original battery and sticks out the back of the laptop by about an inch .. might get more life from it yet as i have changed power and battery settings now, but the downside of the AMD cpu is it is quite thirsty .... The replaced laptop had a Hitachi 320gb HD, which was very quick and responsive ... the replacement i have now has a SLOW WD 160gb HD, and this has affected w10 responsiveness somewhat and the whole system will benefit massively from the 500gb hybrid sshd I have coming from china (£38) ... I have also found on ebay for £7 (from hong kong) the expansion bay which lets you swap out the dvd drive for a 2nd hard drive, so now Im going to put in an old 240gb ssd as my os drive and the 500gb hybrid as a 2nd storage drive .. it plays pinball fx 2 perfectly :smiley: Very happy now with my purchase, but the original battered laptop, i think i felt overcharged and felt I would only pay £50 for it ... but I have been very lucky and now have a wonderful cheap laptop that I can throw around

Glad to know things work out for you. You seems have put in a lot time and effort in it.

Thanks bud ... i really enjoy this stuff for some reason ... been thinking about opening a pc repair shop heheh

:disappointed:

This laptop has docking ability.

If anyone need, could buy a 2nd hand docking station for £10 on ebay delivered.

Together they can make a working station with mobility when required. I am not saying it is as powerful as a PC.


Our office is set up as that with HP Probook 650 (the newer version) + docking station.

I work in a pc repair shop for an IT refurbishing company. You also realistically need to be able to repair phones and tablets to a high standard as well, you also need to spend a bit on stock, selling ink carts is profitable. Make sure before you do it that you do your market research and business analysis, doing something on a whim can lead to financial disaster. Just selling and repairing IT equipment won't be as profitable as you think, you also need a good source for your refurbished stock. I've done this job since 2006. If you have staff you need to be able to manage them, manage the staff turnover. It's never as simple as it appears. I see too many.. well lets call them idiots who think they can repair stuff, they lack the necessary experience and they end up ruining their own reputation and handing the money in to the pockets of people like myself who know exactly how to do the job properly and the level of customer support that is required.

It suits me that there's people out there without experience who think it's an easy job to repair stuff with their home taught experience. I suggest if that's all the experience you have, then work for someone else creditable and eventually you can decide whether you want to do it yourself, and most importantly you'll have experience. I've heard the line "my son's a computer whizz" many many many many many times, it usually turns out that they aren't and joe bloggs finds them on Facebook and gets their equipment ferked up.

Oh and I intend this post to be helpful, I hope it is.

Wow, that is quite a lot to conside, thanks for the inside.

I think he was making a joke.

Quite possibly :smiley: Making money isn't that hard but you still have to learn how to do it properly. Most people when they start up just simply don't have a clue how to cost everything and what the pitfalls are. They also under estimate the level of service required and the range of services. You need a proper analysis or model your business on an existing one that you know works.

These Probooks are decent. Excellent for the money. However don't buy this one if you're thinking of cheaply Hackintoshing it, you need an Intel based one, I believe ones with a 0 at the end of the model number so that would be HP 6450b instead of 6455b.

Yeah I know people who do and have done it ... there is no money in it at all as a one man band ... id rather have no money than be an employee tho ... but you have to earn enough to pay the bills so it will prob never happen ... I do have 25 years IT experience and i think my customer service skills rock heheh

I wouldn't do it personally if you want to make money. I'd make sure my IT skills were in scripting, programming, databases, networking etc where you can earn far more money than a repair shop. Don't forget at the end of the day a PC repair shop is the same model as a car garage, and IT repair technicians do the same job. there's back alley garages and main dealer. You have to decide which you want to be, if it's main dealer then you need employees. I'm an IT repair technician and refurbisher, my job is no different to a car mechanic effectively, just I work on computers and they work on cars.

If you setup on your own and only repair items, you'll struggle, you'll seriously struggle. Don't do it! You need to be able to stock many items especially ink as you need the other items to cover you. Also if you can't source cheap enough stock you'll also struggle. You could buy the laptops in bulk as in this deal, but to make money on these laptops they need to be significantly cheaper than £79, yes customers pay more in a shop, but the cost of computing is falling rapidly.

Look at how much a car mechanic earns on a local street and let that be the judge of how much you can effectively earn. If you can afford to stock other items then that's another source of revenue. Will you earn a comfortable living? Well like I pointed out above there's far easier ways to earn money out of computing and since we only have one life I'd go for one or more of the computing options I gave above.

BUT ... that is not as advertised ....'Grade 2: Refurbished Good - Showing minor signs of use, the odd mark, scratch, buff to be expected' ... secondly I 'think' they changed the listing title from 'Refurbised' to 'Fast' .... i cant see that any time at all has been spent refurbishing them, unless that means reinstalling Win7 ... I would say that you are totally within your rights to ask for a replacement/refund ... whilst im happy with my end result, the first one they sent me was a joke really, and the cynic in me tells me that they send out the terrible ones hoping they wont hear back, and send u a nicer one if you complain ... try it ... mine was replaced in 48 hours and the old was picked up when they delivered the new, with zero hassle ... at least there cust service is good

... bear in mind tho that the one i sent back had a faster 320gb hitachi drive and the replacement had a SLOW WD 160gb 5400rpm drive .... made quite a bit of difference to responsiveness in w10 but im swapping the drive out anyway

Are you saying that Windows 10 doesn't run on this laptop very well or that you just dislike Windows 10? What is your experience with Windows 10 specifically which consumer builds have you used? The initial build 10240 (July 29th 2015) or the latest 10586.63 (November 2015 as 10586.0 and present as .63) ?

[/quote]I wouldn't do it personally if you want to make money. I'd make sure my IT skills were in scripting, programming, databases, networking etc where you can earn far more money than a repair shop. Don't forget at the end of the day a PC repair shop is the same model as a car garage, and IT repair technicians do the same job. there's back alley garages and main dealer. You have to decide which you want to be, if it's main dealer then you need employees. I'm an IT repair technician and refurbisher, my job is no different to a car mechanic effectively, just I work on computers and they work on cars.

If you setup on your own and only repair items, you'll struggle, you'll seriously struggle. Don't do it! You need to be able to stock many items especially ink as you need the other items to cover you. Also if you can't source cheap enough stock you'll also struggle. You could buy the laptops in bulk as in this deal, but to make money on these laptops they need to be significantly cheaper than £79, yes customers pay more in a shop, but the cost of computing is falling rapidly.

Look at how much a car mechanic earns on a local street and let that be the judge of how much you can effectively earn. If you can afford to stock other items then that's another source of revenue. Will you earn a comfortable living? Well like I pointed out above there's far easier ways to earn money out of computing and since we only have one life I'd go for one or more of the computing options I gave above.
[/quote]
Hehe yeah I appreciate your advice thx ... I have left IT now, just got tired of being a number and treated like dirt .. im just an aging hippy who doesnt care about things or money anymore, and ive been there done that, 1st/2nd/3rd line support and high paid contracting ... just doesnt interest me anymore ... will prob end up teaching English in Japan or working in a care home or something like that ... capitalism and 9-5 sucks :smiley:

I wouldn't do it personally if you want to make money. I'd make sure my IT skills were in scripting, programming, databases, networking etc where you can earn far more money than a repair shop. Don't forget at the end of the day a PC repair shop is the same model as a car garage, and IT repair technicians do the same job. there's back alley garages and main dealer. You have to decide which you want to be, if it's main dealer then you need employees. I'm an IT repair technician and refurbisher, my job is no different to a car mechanic effectively, just I work on computers and they work on cars.
If you setup on your own and only repair items, you'll struggle, you'll seriously struggle. Don't do it! You need to be able to stock many items especially ink as you need the other items to cover you. Also if you can't source cheap enough stock you'll also struggle. You could buy the laptops in bulk as in this deal, but to make money on these laptops they need to be significantly cheaper than £79, yes customers pay more in a shop, but the cost of computing is falling rapidly.
Look at how much a car mechanic earns on a local street and let that be the judge of how much you can effectively earn. If you can afford to stock other items then that's another source of revenue. Will you earn a comfortable living? Well like I pointed out above there's far easier ways to earn money out of computing and since we only have one life I'd go for one or more of the computing options I gave above.
[/quote]Hehe yeah I appreciate your advice thx ... I have left IT now, just got tired of being a number and treated like dirt .. im just an aging hippy who doesnt care about things or money anymore, and ive been there done that, 1st/2nd/3rd line support and high paid contracting ... just doesnt interest me anymore ... will prob end up teaching English in Japan or working in a care home or something like that ... capitalism and 9-5 sucks :smiley:[/quote]
Working for yourself works, it's just finding something you can make money on. Everything has its pros and cons.

[/quote]Are you saying that Windows 10 doesn't run on this laptop very well or that you just dislike Windows 10? What is your experience with Windows 10 specifically which consumer builds have you used? The initial build 10240 (July 29th 2015) or the latest 10586.63 (November 2015 as 10586.0 and present as .63) ?
[/quote]
I dont know if you have ever come across something like this before, but i wonder if this is the kind of thing he is talking about ... My Dad bought a £300 i3 w8 4gb ASUS desktop from pc world a couple of years ago, and from the start it ran like a dog ... none of the parts were faulty, but it had a slow hd, and the disk was just constantly maxed out at 100%. Just shutting down could take 2 hours. I put in an ssd and (probably unneeded) an 8gb memory kit and that resolved the issue, but im wondering if it was actually the clean w8.1 install that resolved the issue rather than just the hammer approach of putting in an ssd ... similarly this laptop has been way way better after a clean w10 install, but my dads i3 was really really weird .... just wouldnt do anything you asked it to, but its fine now

Not true, since November Update (included in media generated by Windows Media Creation Tool) you have been able to simply do the clean install of Windows 10 and activate it using any valid Windows 7/8 key - this is the best option, assuming the key on the sticker is still readable.

Good to know thx .... glad they changed that cos it was a real headache ... as you say you need to know the key for this to work ... be aware that windows 8.1 with Bing, on a tablet for example, does not have a key sticker etc and you have to extract the key from windows using a keygrabber ... alternatively, upgrade to windows 10 using the option 'keep everything', check that w10 is activated, at which point a record of your hardware is associated with the embedded key on the microsoft servers (assuming you have connected to the internet). A clean w10 install, using the 'remove everything' option will then install without a key and activate once w10 is installed and has contacted the microsoft servers

Really like windows 10, but it has just crippled my parents laptops (updated from windows 8.1 and the other W7). Especially for my dad, we used to stream the football using Acestream or Sopcast, as a last resort we'd get onto a flash steam. Now it won't run either so we crack out the iPad.
Will roll both back when I get a chance

Yeah, it is nice - makes life a lot easier. However, I did Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrade in the past with "Remove Everything" option selected and I am 99% sure it preserved activation and sent the hardware fingerprint to MS servers (so all subsequent Windows 10 clean installation do not even need typing a key) - maybe this is something they fixed in the recent builds.

You are right about Windows 8.1 with Bing - it is a bit tricky. Sometimes the key comes with the PC/tablet in a box in a form of 'shared' Windows/Office 365 key (works for both products) and sometimes the key is embedded in SLIC portion of the BIOS - in such case Windows 10 installation is going to detect it and perform activation automatically.

Have purchased from these guys a few times before now. Had good and bad experiences. The good thing about them is their customer service is great. The first laptop I bought from them was as described except for having a DVD-ROM instead of DVD-RW. They were very apologetic and sent me the correct drive within 1 day. The second laptop I bought (on behalf of parents) had no issues, was as described and in fact had more ram than advertised so was very happy. Then I bought 2 Thinkpads for my nieces - Both were scruffier than I was expecting and had chips around the screen bezel which wasn't in line with the "Grade 2" description (in my opinion anyway), plus the "Thinkpad" emblem was missing from one. Nonetheless I didn't think the appearance was sufficiently bad to send either back, at least not initially. While in the process of upgrading one of them to Windows 10 I started to notice hairs protruding from the side of the keys. The more I investigated this, the more hair kept appearing (it was obviously dog hair). I ended up unclipping each of the keys in turn to discover the whole keyboard had literally clumps of hair and debris underneath each key. It was gross!! I ended up removing all the hair and taking a picture of it to send to them - Again they were very apologetic and admitted it shouldn't have gone out in that state. I got sent a replacement which turned out to be the best condition of the lot and was near enough immaculate. As someone said earlier I strongly suspect they keep the best ones back to pacify people who complain.
Anyway, I need a cheap second laptop for myself so have ordered one of these earlier tonight.....hoping they'll see I'm a repeat customer and not send me a turkey!

I'd check you're running 10586.63, you can do this by typing winver in to the search box on the taskbar and pressing enter.

Now £399.99 o_O

Bit shocked - just collected this from my local Argos. In reasonable cosmetic condition though absolutely filthy. Switched it on suddenly get a pop up from Microsoft telling me the version of Windows 7 may be counterfeit. Now there's writing on bottom right hand side of screen (which I cant get rid of) saying "Windows 7 Build 7600. This copy of Windows is not genuine". I knew this purchase was a bit of a lottery but didn't expect this!! Kind of wondering if they've sent me a return that someone else has had and messed with. Rather strange as there was also none of the usual software (anti virus, open office etc) installed which I have had on other laptops I've bought from them and no COA. Will be phoning them tomorrow, not happy to say the least.

That's very interesting- thanks. I've sent them a message now so will see what they say but I suspect you're right. I doubt they would knowingly send a fake copy....just seems like they've been generally slap dash and not checked anything. I ran Belarc Advisor and discovered there's 86 updates missing including Service Pack 1 (which is supposed to be installed according to their advert)....doesn't look like it's been touched in months

Hi just wanted to say thanks again for the heads up on this - I tried it and it's worked!!

I just want to add DO NOT buy from this seller awful customer service and have just had a case closed in my favour with visa as it was delivered wrong address and seller didn't want to help or refund me!