I've got a maximum of

I was thinking the same not too long back. A place local to me is www.tekexpress.co.uk and I've only heard good things from locals. If you click laptop sales they list their seconduser lappies.

USB = easy to get as virtually every decent laptop has it. Serial port - hmm old laptops may still have it, but they won't run XP anywhere near as well (still acceptable though).

It's a pity you don't have a little more cash! I got a Dell Inspiron 1150 with Pentium4 double memory(512) Windows XP and DVD CD burner for

Josh.......

the magic words you need to know are:

EBAY + IBM T22/T23........

OR www.2ndchancepc.co.uk IIRC............

Just two places to start with.........

HTH

IBM T22/T23........

IIRC Highpoint Distribution have some T23s in...P3 1.13GHz 256Mb I think - would probably run XP without too much hassle.

Any major reason it has to run XP Josh?

I could get hold of a Dell Latitude 750 for you, with 512mb RAM running Win2000 for

Would tend to agree with WW_VRS though - anything which can run XP well probably won't have a serial port...

The P28s are the current model with a serial port , and there's at least one HP that has a serial port as well.

have a look @ itcsales.com

they do second user, refurbished and new laptops

The P28s are the current model with a serial port ' date=' and there's at least one HP that has a serial port as well.[/quote']

But probably more which don't these days...especially in the

But probably more which don't these days...especially in the

We've got a few of these at work where COM ports are essential

Same here, but due to some corporate-wide purchasing policy we can't specifically choose ones with serial ports...have to make do with USB to serial converters which are rather hit'n'miss. :(

Those Samsung ones on E-bay look pretty damn good VFM.

Rob.

Same here' date=' but due to some corporate-wide purchasing policy we can't specifically choose ones with serial ports...have to make do with USB to serial converters which are rather hit'n'miss. :(

Those Samsung ones on E-bay look pretty damn good VFM.

Rob.[/quote']

Thats the joy of working for a smaller company.

I *am* the purchasing policy

As for the samsungs , you'll probably struggle to get a better spec for the money.

Using SWMBO's Dell Inspiron, I have found that USB2 is much faster than USB when using a HEX-USB+CAN interface lead. (The laptop has 2 USB1.0 ports, but a USB2.0 notebook card can be fitted into a slot on the side).

if you can stretch a couple of quid more... www.medionshop.co.uk - click on "refurbished" on the left hand side and scroll down

IONetworks are great for converters, the product we used to use was the EdgePort 4, also we've used the EdgePort 8.

Later they introduced the EP1. They are pretty expensive compared to some, but these are made for POS applications so they are very, very robust, MS verified drivers.

As for XP bloat - XP will run fine as long as you have enough memory, you can turn all the gfx junk off to regain the speed

I've got a Dell Inspiron 3500 here which runs XP, it has had a memory upgrade though and it's still pretty slow compared to the D600 Latitude - then that has 2G of memory, a faster HDD and so forth

If the main aim for the machine is to run VAGCOM and perhaps do a bit of browsing pretty much anything that runs W2K will do. If you want do to DVD replay you may have to try out what works.

As for XP bloat - XP will run fine as long as you have enough memory, you can turn all the gfx junk off to regain the speed

That's my point, if you're gonna turn all the fancy stuff off, it might as well be Win2k!

Depends what he's after I suppose, if it's just a general use laptop and a bit of VAG-COM then a Win2k offering would be more than adequate in my mind. In this scenario XP doesn't offer much else, IMO.

Steve

Josh - I got my Dell Inspiron for

Thanks for all your help guys.

I ended up going with the Medion Refurbished lappy @

Nice