Episode: 2595
Title: HPR2595: New laptop bargain?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2595/hpr2595.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:20:18

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This in HP are episode 2500 and 95 entitled New App Top Bargain, and in part of the series, Hardware Upgrades.
It is hosted by Tony H.A. Tony H.1212 and in about 4 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, this in a short show about another trip to the computer auction and one of my purchases.
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Greetings HPR listeners. This is Tony Hughes again coming from
Blackpool in the UK.
As you heard on my last episode, I recently visited the computer auction and I frequent here in the UK.
If you want to draw over their catalogue, their website is www.realnorth.co.uk and I'll
pop a copy of that in the show notes. So at the sale in June, they had some really good three to four year old laptops for sale.
And I decided to take a trip to see if I could liberate a few bargains.
And one of the items I came away with was 3 to Shuba Z30A Ultrabooks of the i5 4th generation
aspect. The basic specs are i5 4300U CPU 128GB M-SATA Solid State Drive 8GB of DDR RAM.
It's got 3 USB 3 ports, VGA and HDMI video out combined audio in and out jack SD card reader
and a full ethernet jack. It's also got mobile Intel HD graphics which uses up to 192 megabytes of
the shared memory with the rest of the machine. I'll put a link in the show notes to the full
specifications. I had also picked up some 240 gig SSDs at the auction and the plan to upgrade the
storage but this isn't possible as there's no 2.5 inch drive bay. It does support up to 128 gig
high capacity SD cards so this could be an option if you don't want to go down the expensive
upgrading the M-SATA drive. However, as luck would have it, one of the other machines I purchased
had a 256 gig M-SATA drive in a 2.5 inch caddy so I was able to swap that out and both laptops
got an upgrade but I'll tell you more about that in another show. So after doing the hardware
upgrade I proceeded to install Ubuntu 1804 Mate onto the PC. The install worked flawlessly
and after completion and configuration the machine to my liking everything seems to be working fine.
Battery condition for a four year old laptop is excellent at over 90% however a replacement
can be had only bay for around 30 pound of needed and I always factor this into any second 10 laptops
I buy. Since I got it running I've installed Windows 7 in a virtual machine in this case virtual
box as I've already got a pre configured virtual box and a hard drive image that makes it less
of a hassle to install as I don't have to spend days waiting for the upgrades to come through
when this is up and running in the background who doesn't over tax the host machine
and for Linux users it does mean you have access to the occasional bits of lightweight MS
software that you might need without the need to look around to PCs. So did I bag a bargain?
Well four years ago the release of these laptops they went for about 1100 quid plus in the UK
and even today they fetch 160 pounds in good order on the likes of eBay for a model with
the specification as a high-riginally purchased it. I would never have been on the market to spend
a thousand pounds plus on the laptop now or then so the only way I can enjoy these types of machines
is after they've been pre-loved by someone else. Let's just say 160 pounds is quite a bit more
than I paid but with the upgrade to a 256 gig M SATA drive I have a better machine for a little less
than that. I personally think I've bagged the bargain which will probably do me good service
for the coming months and years. So anyway that's enough about this particular purchase
I'll see you down the line sometimes. Bye for now.
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