What is a video card? Why would a laptop need one?

[Katymac]

Because they are much cheaper without one

Well, it's perhaps a good deal cheaper than a new laptop and as for smell, depends on the gender of cat - I guess you have a Tom.

Just spotted (having seen the various prices for the Vostro 1720s) - Z2B8EE6R is
a) red case (sometimes Dell charges a premium for anything other than black - their 'ice blue' and so on may look nice but add 30 quid or more, I think)
b) certified refurbished - means they mayhave had closer inspection than the 'scratch and dent' category.

So it might be a combination of those factors on top of faster CPU ...

Huff - no-one mentioned a separate card in the OP! Just why would you need one at all.

You're right, my apologies, no mention of "separate".

A "card" to me implies a PCI-style "add-on" which won't fit in a laptop, of course.

Now, now - no arguing about my lack of technical ability/description/explanation

Argue? With WebDude? About technology? Never, never, never! I have peripheral knowledge only, I'm afraid.

Now, if you want to know about Contact Centre technologies, I'm your girl!

Hey - don't say "never" - I'm only human and certainly will admit I make mistake, am happy to be corrected, and learn useful info most days, which, even if not new, is new to me.

Katymac did your faulty laptop survive ?

Just curious about what happened with it.

I haven't tried to start it

But a friend is going to take the back off & remove the hard drive - & then apparently plug it in to my computer with a USB (however that works) to download the data

But she can't find the right wire atm

Ah - OK.

The thing she'd be plugging in is something usually called an external enclosure...

Something like this or SATA or this

Older drives were called "IDE" or "EIDE" and more recently called "PATA" which have a fairly wide cable to connect the drive (parallel cable, hence Parallel ATA)

Modern drives are now commonly using only 4 wires and called Serial ATA hence SATA for short.

Clearly it won't be possible to guess which type of enclosure to use without seeing the drive, or perhaps the spec for the laptop (though some only say 160 GB or whatever size, and don't state SATA).

I guess it would make sense to remove the HD and just see if the machine starts (and bleeps because it finds no hard drive). If it starts up, then you could still have a working laptop just by putting the drive back in. I guess using the external drive on USB method means you can copy photos, videos and documents off the old laptop drive.

Would have made an offer if you had decided to bin it! (does it still smell by the way)

It stinks & it's all corroded
I will be throwing away........

Fair enough... sorry it suffered so badly... hope the hard drive survived OK.

Have warned my sister to get over here and collect her new Windows 7 laptop (bought February) as my cat has left damp paw marks on it (sits on it, or anything else left on the table, wish she wouldn't but there are limits to how much I can supervise her, and as she is over 10, she 'knows her own mind' and can be a bit of a rebel).

Just wish I had a bigger table really, but 4 keyboards, and 5 screens take some space! (plus mousemats and mice). I suppose I could do some furniture re-arranging to be able to put some monitors on a storage unit instead of the table, and leave room for cat to sit (she tends to come onto my lap, or to try to rest on one of my arms, which makes typing awkward!)

Mine sits under my right arm on the sofa while I am typing I wish she would sit on the left as my left hand moves less

How about brackets on a wall?

Most likely going to use a KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch with 4 machines, and later on get a further 4-input VGA switch (so just one monitor to view output from 4 machines, as I can set them up to monitor different websites and should not need to touch keyboard or mouse most of the time).

I'm going to convert the front bedroom but the walls are mostly too thin for supporting the amount of kit I'd like - I did see an Ikea unit about 8' square which I was considering for downstairs lounge (but it would have completely filled the bay window - had potential as some sort of barrier against thieves in fact - and decided it would be seen as a challenge and too tempting if lots of wires were visible from outside!)

One way glass?

WebDude, if possible I'd look more at using Remote Desktop (if you're only running Windows) or VNC (if you've got multiple OS's) approach to what you want than using a KVM. We used a fair number of KVMs in my last job and IME and unless you kept the video cables really short, the video quality would noticeably suffer. Plus you can only see one client PC at a time.

Using Remote Desktop etc means that you can bung the PCs themselves in any convenient (and locked) room and just have one small PC with a keyboard, mouse and a big monitor, and you can then control all the others from there. You could even have multiple client windows open simultaneously. This approach doesn't work in every scenario of course (it's a pain if you do a lot of rebooting) but it can be a lot more usable than KVMs.

one way glass - yes, had considered that - and as bay window is actually 5 columns by 3 rows of glass even wondered about making a "big brother" CCTV look by having a webcam for each window on the top row LOL

Snorbs - thanks for the comments. Have used VNC but don't generally touch Remote Desktop. Tend to use LogMeIn to access client/ family PCs if necessary.

Here, I have a mix. Currently one or two Win 98SE, several XP, an iMac (planning to increase to several) and a few linux machines (planning to use at least three different distributions - it helps when supporting different clients with VPS hosting).

Yes, the video cable thing could be a problem but one of the KVM switches I just bought has USB and VGA inputs for each machine, and I'd be aiming to put some very quiet machines behind a partition on shelving so the cables would be only thing coming to my side of partition.

Have also considered using Y splitters so I can plug into both local monitors and have cables off to KVM, allowing me to see other outputs, but concentrate on screen closest to me with keyboard + mouse.

Still have not decided whether to use shelving and laptops (like library magazine rack), as long as I can find laptops which open out to 180 degrees - several newer machine will only open to about 120 degrees which make them unsuitable.

If I go for some machines like the Acer Revo then as they have HDMI output, I would use a fairly standard TV with 3 HDMI inputs.

1920x1080 would probably be on the expensive end, but something of lower resolution (with or without Freeview) may well prove an easily affordable solution.

There have also been suggestions of video adapters plugged into USB port, feeding signal to a wireless receiver plugged into your monitor. So once they are on the market, my plans might change dramatically, with a smaller number of machines (since it would be possible to expand the desktop to several screens rather than the normal 2, possibly 3, which one can achieve by adding video cards, or with suitable laptops, simply by adding an external monitor).

Umm...

My only comment to that is with a sort of slack smile on my face indicating total bemusement.....

You guys are so beyond my 'tech' abilities ....can you answer another question can you buy a cable to attach a laptop to a TV? (so I can watch iPlayer?)

In general yes you can, but it depends very much on the laptop and the computer.

For example my Apple laptop can connect to my "old" standard def TV via an S-Video port on the laptop and a cable that connects into a SCART socket.

New TVs can often handle direct VGA input or even HDMI if your laptop supports it.

So what TV and laptop do you have?

Haven't bought the laptop yet the man in the shop said I might be better with a Wii - apparently I can watch iPlayer on that

TV is big.....umm that's about all I know

I'll have a look & see (tomorrow)

Thanks

iPlayer on a Wii is brilliant

The big question for the TV is what connectors it has available and if its High-Def or not (though that latter part isn't essential, my TV isn't high def and I can still plug my laptop into it).

Not HD (don't see the point)

& it has one of those small wedgie connectors with a screw either side for the input

One of these?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SVGA_port.jpg

If you give the make and model we should be able to lookup and find out exactly what it has...

Yep one of those

has the bigger one too but that has the skybox & DVD in it (which doesn't work)

Actually I think we need a big re-think
Maybe I should get some sort of harddrive instead - TV stuff is so hard

When you say "bigger" do you mean one of these?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scartsocks.jpg

It sounds like your TV has a VGA socket in it allready (that smaller one that I linked to earlier). If it is then you should be able to plug your laptop straight in using a VGA cable (VGA ports are very common on laptops).

However that you say your TV isn't high-def makes me wonder if it really is a VGA port, can you post the make and model of your TV?