[Hidden-tech] looking for a used PC laptop

[Chris Hoogendyk]

Tom Adams- Reelife Productions wrote:
> why a pc? you could get a great mac mini for $400 (you'd need a 
> monitor & keyboard).  big fan of Craigslist for this type of purchase
>
>
> On Nov 17, 2008, at 8:57 AM, Nancy Salwen <nancy at salwen.net 
> <mailto:nancy at salwen.net>> wrote:
>> Hi Everyone - 
>>
>> I'm looking for an inexpensive, PC laptop - used. All I need it for 
>> is to proof web pages (and if my 9 year old son could play some 
>> online games with it that would be great too!). I'm a graphic 
>> designer and work on a Mac, so I don't need this PC to do anything 
>> complicated. I'm hoping that I can get away with spending a couple 
>> hundred bucks or less on this - is this reasonable?
>>
>> Does anyone have an old laptop they want to get rid of cheap?


Another approach -- if you are a graphic designer and have a reasonably 
high end, recent Mac -- say, a decent Intel Mac -- and all you are 
really after is proofing web pages -- Then some sort of virtual machine 
approach would allow you to have Mac OS X, WinXP, Ubuntu, . . . all 
available on your existing machine for testing purposes.

So, make an adjustment in a web page, flip up IE on XP and see if it 
displays correctly, flip to Opera on Ubuntu, then back to Firefox on Mac 
OS X -- all on the same monitor/keyboard/machine. VMware is highly 
recommended. Parallels has a new version just out that boasts major 
improvements. This is the way my son does web design.

Downside is that it doesn't give your son an alternative to using your 
computer.



-- 
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Chris Hoogendyk

-
   O__  ---- Systems Administrator
  c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments
 (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

<hoogendyk at bio.umass.edu>

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Erdös 4