katie fagan

Hi everyone, I think I am just about ready to get the most stupidest question award ever but please be gentle. I am not computer orientated so, when we arrive in our rental (which has broadband included) we will be without a computer until our furniture arrives, so did anyone hire a lap top to keep them giong in the intrim???? rather than buying one or can you get really cheap ones??????HELP!!!

Racht70

Hi there hun, its not a stupid question and when Australia wakes up im sure someone will be along to assist you.
Good luck with the move

Funky Monkey

Hi Katie.

Believe me that is not the daftest question asked. You could get a laptop which we have done or else yes you will have to wait for your computer to arrive to get full use or log on to your details using someone elses.

Laptops have of course got cheaper just weigh up what you actually want it for, Lots of people in my opinion get obsessed with the technology bug and buy something that is beyond their requirements. That said you don't want to buy a "dog" either good luck

bigAPE

Laptops by their nature should be portable, unless you have one of those MASSIVE suitcase sized laptops sold by PC World. I would guess that most of us who had a laptop bought it with us in our carry on. We did

Siren & Brian

http://abacusrentit.com.au/?source=adwords


PLenty of hire companies like the one above, just google laptop hire, or you can buy them starting from about $700 for a basic one.

flip

Hiring seems a good idea as although you can buy them here at about $599 for the cheapest, you're likely to need to download software that can take a huge toll on the monthly download limit which will be especially annoying if you're relying on dial up and/or pay as you go at an internet cafe and/or friends' hospitality. Eg. My nephew brought his brand new super laptop with him at Christmas and it exhausted our monthly download limit to set it up - we were not happy!

So a pro for buying before you come where you can get it all set up while you still have normal use of the internet.

Having said that, any warranty would be invalid over here.

Alternatively asking the experts - can you buy a laptop already downloaded with software?

bcworld

Problem generally is that when you first connect it up to the internet it's going to go looking for software updates to the pre-configured software, noteably service packs for Microsoft Windows, especially if you have Vista. I recently got a new laptop and in the first couple of days it downloaded close to 1Gb of patches & service packs from Microsoft! Not helped by the fact that it downloaded the same 300Mb Service pack for Office over and over again! :curse:

If you have off-peak broadband allowance, try and do all this downloading at night, having said that its very hard to try and stop these downloads sometimes.

Pollyana

I use dodo dialup on a $69 for three months deal - has unlimited downloads and unlimited hours, so for those os us still on dialup its an excellent package

bigAPE

"dial up"... not sure I have heard of that one. Hang on... oh yeah, is that the one that comes with tin cans and a mile of string

I must say I'm not sure what I would do stuck in an area without broadband now. Mind you I wouldn't be able to work for one thing.

Gerry D

hi

Mikeyc

You can rent one from places like Radio Rentals.

But the weekly cost to rent one (from $5) you could get your own one on finance for the same price, from somewhere like Dell or Harvey Norman.

They good thing with renting though is they will upgrade it (sawp it for a newer rental) later, or they will usually let you buy it after a certain amout of time, for hardly anything. (freind was renting a plasma for $80 a month) after 5 moths they let him buy it out for $50). Good considering a normal retail value would of been 2k.

Mikey