Anyone got any idea?

Trying to get my old mother on the intertubes. Shed use it for email, and a tiny bit of research so the cheapest package would do.

The main problem is she has an ancient computer, something along the lines of a P200, 32meg RAM, etc etc.

Im thinking this might not be good enough, especially for flash sites for example?

As you say it comes down the sites that you visit.  Flash may not be able to run.

Shockwave Minimum Specs.....

    *  Win98, Pentium II, 64MB
    * Win2K, Pentium III, 128MB
    * WinXP, Pentium III, 128MB
    * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6sp1, 5.5sp2, 5.01sp2
    * Netscape 7.1

Other than that it will do the job of typicall web surfing/emails.

Hmm, gotta sort out something decent for her then, bigpockets seems to have some good deals on old base units.

A 400mhz/128mb machine should be enough for flash, Auntie, and the like. Such a box should be free if you ask around.

Check gumtree.com (thanks, Sara!)

Ive recently moved to a new area, and I dont know anyone so blagging one is out of the question. Ive looked at bigpockets as I can pay for it and get it delivered to my mums house as transporting it from here would prove a little troublesome.

The headline PC, a Dell P4 (1.7GHz PCs 256 Mb RAM, Min 20 Gig, Floppy,CD, NIC) for 120GBP at bigpockets looks to be a corporate bruiser thatll last as long as the Pantheon. Comes sans OS, but youre smart enough to mitigate that.

Haha indeed   , just gotta talk to her later, see if shes happy to have broadband.

Hmm I wonder if the missus uni will have vista installed before she leaves, corp keys are nice.

Vista promises to be more of a PITA than an updated XP for anyone short of a power user for the time being. Heck, if shes just doing mail and some surfing, even a locked down *nix box could be the business.

I got a PIII (500mhz iirc), off ebay for Ã,£20 - nuff to run server 2003.

the dell gx2X0s are fairly bullet proof but ive seen them less than that on ebay.  


"dell gx*"


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1GHz-DELL-GX150-w-WINDOWS-2K-LICENSE-KEY-STICKER_W0QQitemZ220075665198QQihZ012QQcategoryZ179QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Quote from: maximusotterThe headline PC, a Dell P4 (1.7GHz PCs 256 Mb RAM, Min 20 Gig, Floppy,CD, NIC) for 120GBP at bigpockets looks to be a corporate bruiser thatll last as long as the Pantheon. Comes sans OS, but youre smart enough to mitigate that.

That should give her a heck of a boost in capability beyond what she needs. 750mhz will do most things. Still having a lot of extra power never hurt anyone...  

If it has a spare memory slot I would put another stick of ram in too, just to give some headroom. 256 should run Vista, 750 should do it very well.

Or theres always Linux...

Well shes decided she cant afford anything so Im gonna have a poke around and see if Ive got the bits to build a machine.

The big problem would be getting it delivered to her, would more than likely cost more than the machine.  :shock:

Quote from: White GiantWell shes decided she cant afford anything

aint that the familiar story. best of luck digging around in your loft mate, weve all been there

I managed to build a p3 500 with 384mb ram and 10gb HDD for absolutely nothing two years back.  If youre near a uni its worth going down and sweet-talking the techs, they normally have boxes and boxes of redundant bits.

Good idea. The missus will be dispatched wearing a short skirt to Warwick Uni asap.  :mrgreen:

AN 80286 with SVGA on the WWW via DSL