My baby laptop is going to get wiped soon

[propita]

I got it for law school. It's four years old now and running slow.

I have a friend who's--certified? trained? cleared? whatever--to work on Dell laptops. So he's going to wipe it and reformat is for me. And put on a new keyboard ($20 on ebay) since I've worn the letters off of 8 keys and dented 5 (I have sharp little nails and I type with my fingertips, straight down, rather than using my fingers' pads so much.

So they'll just be a bit of wear and teat, and a worn spot where my left hand rests below the keyboard. Otherwise, he'll be good as new!!! His name's "Albert"--when I got him, it asked for a computer name, so "Albert." He's a 700m, so he's kinda small. The bigger Dell laptop is "Archimedes"--he's a vostro 1400, so he's much bigger than Albert; the baby netbook is "Alva"--he's not a Dell. Not sure what I'd name a real big laptop, one of those 17" guys--maybe "Aeschylus."

We've given up on desktops. We're neither gamers nor doing huge amounts of music/video/etc, so laptops are just right.

Can you tell I'm procrastinating from my studying?

 

[Deks]

One suggestion:
Have your guy avoid installation of extra DELL programs such as 'support', 'battery monitor' and all other bloatware as it only slows down the computer immensely while giving you no distinct advantage because all of those aspects are already incorporated into XP/Vista (and other) OS-es.

Stick with a clean OS install with latest patches/service packs, bare drivers for all devices, an antivirus such as Nod32 Smart security, a utility for optimizing/clean up of the OS such as TuneUP, VLC player (for video files), codecs (for reading multiple file formats just in case such as 'XPCodecPack' or 'VistaCodecPack') and Open Office as a substitution for Microsoft Office.

For law school, you don't need anything else really.

 

[Garrovick]

Sounds like you could use a healthy dose of a fresh Ubuntu install. I did several months ago and my 4 year old computer runs like one twice it's power.

No memory hog virus watchers need.

E-Machines W1338 Sempron 3100+ 1.8GHz single core
2 gig ram
256mb nvidia 6200 pci video card.
MS wireless mouse/keyboard
19 inch HP w1907 wide screen monitor

 

[propita]

He leaves off that stuff, but does load a "de-crapinator." Frightening genius. Nice guy.

 

[ed629]

I recently rebuilt a laptop for someone, I used an 'alternate' OS. The laptop takes about 15 seconds from power on to when it's ready to use. The person I did it for was reallu happy with it, it runs much faster than when they first got it.