What makes laptop internet connection fast?

hmac

Hi, I am trying to advise my elderly father who wants to buy a laptop and get going on the internet. My own laptop has a dual core t4300 processor, 4gb memory, with 3mb broadband, and is nice and fast for the internet. So which element makes it nice and fast? My dad wants to simply surf the internet, no downloading music, movies or anything. Does he need spec as good as mine? Will 2gb memory do? Would less mb on the broadband be ok? He's relying on me to help him buy a laptop and i don't him to spend more than he needs to. Any advice would be much appreciated.

hmac

I forgot to say, he definately doesn't want a netbook as he wants a large screen, and a dvd drive.

Voodu Child

2GB of memory (ram) is fine. Vista and Win7 both run well with 2GB.

A dual core processor is preferable. Thats kind of the norm nowadays anyway, even cheap €400 laptops can be gotten with basic dual core processors. It sounds like your father doesnt need a fast laptop, but its certainly nice to get something that runs smoothly and has enough power to last for a good few years.

You could certainly go a bit slower than 3Mb for basic surfing if you wanted. Just make sure that if you are using wireless broadband, that it is well protected, so your neighbours can't be piggybacking onto it.

I would also get the laptop all set up before he uses it. Get rid of any bloatware, put a good antivirus on there (MSSE is fine), set up automatic updates, all that kind of stuff.

hmac

Thanks for that Voodu Child. You're thinking the same as me! I've already told him that I'll be taking the laptop from him and getting it all set up for him, and regularly maintaining it for him. He wants fast internet, cos he's a very impatient old codger, and he tried the internet once on a dial up connection and it drove him scatty waiting for pages to load. I'm going to get him orgainised with wireless broadband, so maybe i'll go only 2mb. I am aware that I could be unleashing a monster here!!!

ricman

You can buy a CENTRINO CPU laptop in currys,dixons ,1 or 2 gig ram 260euro approx.That,ll give fast net acess .That cpu is about 1.5ghz speed.
i used a 1ghz cpu ,512meg ram thinkpad,it gets 3meg per second net acess.
YOU might wanna get 15inch widescreen laptop.
SET the resolution at 1024x768 ,thats my advice.
SET a password on the router like ASdf456fg if its a wifi network.

L31mr0d

I'd also recommend switching him over to Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer. A lot of the perceived slowness of browsing comes down to the browser itself, and IE is a dog.

Google Chrome is amazingly fast. Firefox should hopefully catch up in v4 but v3 atm is still quite sluggish in comparison.

I've also heard good things about the Opera browser but haven't tried it myself.

hmac

I use the latest firefox myself, and that's what he's had a go at using, so I'll probably set him up with that. He's not going to be able to handle too many options!