Buying second hand computer. Is this a good deal??

[VanillaPumpkin]

We currently have a laptop that is 5 years old and I am worried about it dying sometime soon. The CDRW has stopped working and it is really slow. We have already fitted a new hard drive but this hasn't made much difference. It is only 40gb but the other one was so clogged and making funny sounds and causing crashing and the new hard drive solved this prob. Any way my dBIL has offered us the following spec desk top for £150 including a computer desk.

PC is a "medion Cybermaxx". All the boxes.

pentium 4 3.2 ghz processor
512 MB ram
160GB HDD
256 MB graphics
DVD ROM
DVD RAM
Floppy drive
1280x1024 monitor
Wireless
load of connection slots for cards and AV cables
TV card (watch and record tv on the 'puta)
Wireless keyboard and mouse.

We thought it was a fair offer but the 512mb ram is the same as the laptop. Can we upgrade this? (I know nothing about this sort of thing....) Will we notice any difference in speed etc?
Essentially he bought it as a gaming PC. We don't really play games though.
Anyway.......help please????!!!!!
Thank you.

Anyone??

Are all you techy people busy having a life?? I suppose it is New Year's Eve .

Hopeful bump....

that sounds good to me. You probably should buy more ram, but that's really cheap (you could put another 512 in for about £20). it will be a lot faster than your current laptop, especially with a ram upgrade.

however, computers often run slow because of excessive redundant software and/or a hard drive that needs de-fragging. could that be the the problem with your laptop?

Hooray a response! Thank you .
Yes I am sure that there is a load of junk on this laptop in addition to the itunes, photos and email box I am very crap at emptying. DH has defragged it recently but it made no difference really. I would like to have the laptop as a spare I suppose. I would hate to be without a computer...
My dbil has suggested using Gmail for all our emails etc so I am looking into that too.
So you think we could go with this and just add another 512mb ram to the box? That is good news. dBIL is quite computer savvy so I am sure he could help us with that.
I see it as a bit of a fresh start too, a chance to make sure I don't clog it up with useless stuff now I know a bit more about computers.
It sounds like it will be good for watching tv on too like the missed programmes you can get from Channel 4 on demand and now the bbc. Am I right in thinking this?
Thank you, and Happy New Year!

If you would like an invite for a gmail account let me know and I will sort it for you.

Ooh an invite?! Thank you but what does that mean? Can you not just join up?? Can you tell I haven't even looked at that yet? . Right off to google.

emails on ly become a problem when you have more than 20GB worth so I doubt that is causing the problem on your laptop. It's likely to be a combination of itunes, msn (or similar messaging thing)and other software. also do you have any "internet security" type programme? they can also slow down computers (you need anti-virus of course, but the other stuff is excessive imo)

anyway, the bad news is that the tv on demand stuff has a long way to go - it comes in 3 inch wide boxes and are really not what you'd call watchable. you can just watch normal telly via the tv card though

We have MSN and i-tunes and my friend sends me LOADS of emails with attachments from You tube etc. We only have AVG antivirus as when we had Firewall it was blocking everything! Shame to hear about the on demand stuff.
Another good thing is the DVD writer as at the moment I can only save my stuff to a memory stick....

Any advice from the New Years Day crowd??

Well I'd be tempted, it has a faster processor than mine (which I built myself 18 months ago for more money than that).

You can indeed upgrade the ram but must be careful to exactly match the 512 strip you already have in there, or alternatively buy a new 1 gig RAM and remove the 512 (if you can't match it exactly) - mine runs fine on 512, but it rather depends on what you want to do with it - if he bought it for gaming, it should be a fast pc anyway, as games are notoriously hungry on resources so you may not need any more RAM anyway. 160 gb is a nice size for a HD and you could always add another at a later date.

Is he supplying a disc with all motherboard drivers in case you ever need to reinstall Windows? That might be useful. Is he wiping it and reinstalling Windows and all peripherals so you have a clean install like a new PC? Again useful but probably not essential if he is around to help you set it up to your own requirements. You should find it a big improvement over a 5 year old laptop even as it stands, so long as it doesn't have any known problems - presumably you;ve seen it working.

You don't need an invite for Gmail anymore - you can just sign up

Oh fantastic. You sound like you know what you are talking about! He will wipe it and reinstall the XP and as you say he will be around for help and 'IT support' . Yes, we have used it in the past but I didn't actually pay that much attention to it at the time.....
I think we will go for it and speak to him about the extra RAM. I love my BIL dearly but he is a bit tight sometimes and wouldn't drop the price because we were family (if you see what I mean) so I am glad you think it is a fair price. Hopefully he will let us pay over two months too. My Dad thought it was too much because of how cheap new ones are nowadays, but as I said to him we don't have £400-500 so a second hand one from a trustworthy source is a good alternative really.....

I feel mean saying he is tight. He isn't really but he never gives anything away even to his own mother.

Oh and I like the look of Gmail and so think I will swap but prob set that up when we get the new PC.

Thank you!

some advice...

1 - as stated above upgrade to 1g ram.. do not buy 512MB as this is not cost effective.. you can buy a 1G RAM strip for between $13-20.. the existing 512MB may even still work with this installed giving you a total of 1.5GB.... what this also means is that if you decide to do some video editting at a later date then another £13-20 will upgrade you to 2GB by replacing the 512MB module... for the TV card and iTunes and other apps you WILL need 1GB RAM the difference will be very noticable on XP

2 - as also stated above make sure the RAM you buy is correct for the motherboard

3 - buy a decent antivirus application McAffee or Norton are the most common.. also make sure you keep up the substciption for the updates.. AV tools without updates are not AV tools

4 - is there any warrantly let on the box??.. it is worth noting that PC's are very reliable and most failures happen within the first 3 months if they are going to happen at all

5 - after the XP reinstallation please make sure that you have a good internet connection and that you enable the auto update function in XP so that all the latest patches and updates get installed. Also visit the MS Windows Update website at least once a month for any non critical updates as these do not auto install.

can't think of anything else at the moment

Thank you. That is great sound advice!
We have been offline since the new year (don't ever go with Tiscali, shocking customer service and I am now looking for a new ISP.) and I am now online on the new second hand computer. It is great! We will be upgrading the memory and dBIL has promised to help, but budget constraints mean this is just brill for now. Having said that I have only had it up and running for about an hour or so......