On 01/08/2012 16:43, Man at B&Q wrote:
On Aug 1, 3:10 pm, Martin Brown
wrote:
On 01/08/2012 14:34, Bill wrote:

Someone has sent me this question

"Do you have any sources who could source 25 very simple
reconditioned heavy laptops which could run from a wireless network and
run only word, excel and powerpoint?"

I assume he wants the machines to come with the Microsoft applications
and licences, and I assume the "heavy" is to make walking more difficult.

Would whatever deal Morgan has on refurbed laptops coupled with Office
compatible freeware do the job. Does it have to have full VBA support
and exact Microsoft Office functional compatibility or will almost do?

You should budget for AV software too

If you want to potentially kill the performance of the old laptop.

Any machine these days needs at least 2GB of ram to run an AV. But in
the OP's position running without AV would be tantamount to suicide!

It is a valid point though that buying laptops (which hold value rather
too well secondhand) is not cost effective if mobility is not required.

My desktop boots *much* faster since deleting MSE.

MBQ

There are better free AV products that don't completely hammer
performance. He should probably get his friend to consider SFF Dell or
HP boxes since they are usually better price performance than laptops.
Memory for desktops is cheaper as well (again secondhand).

Also have at least one machine in the 2GHz 2Core 4GB ram class that is
able to do basic image processing and render video albeit slowly.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown