Non gaming laptop

[Cricketman]

You could pick yourself a Macbook for $750! One thing that is great about America - cheap electronics!

 

[Ollie_H]

You think the UK is bad, it's almost $1600 for a decent mac here and even that is a lower limit. Everything is so expensive here!

 

[MasterBlaster76]

I went with this one in the end, I'd read good reviews about it and the price wasn't bad:

Buy Acer Aspire 5741A 320GB 15.6in Laptop. at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for .

For some reason though, it doesn't want to connect wireless to the router. It is identifying the router - the name comes up - but when I try to connect and enter the security key, it keeps saying that it cannot connect. I tried connecting an ethernet cable to it, and then connecting to the router wireless - that had worked in the past with wireless connection issues, but not this time.

This is my nephew's main Christmas present, so I want to get wireless up and running ASAP - the net and youtube in particular are where he spends most of his PC time, so without that working....

Edit: Just found this post:

Another thought - You do have the Acer WiFi card set to INFRASTRUCTURE and not AD-HOC networking.

How do I change that setting? Can't find anything like that under Networks etc in Control panel.

If the laptop can 'see' our router and accepts the security code, why won't it connect to the damn thing? My money is on some sort of setting that needs changing in the laptop's WiFi adapter, but what that could be - that's not my department - I hope you guys can help.

Edit: After doing some research, there's a good chance that the integrated WiFi card (Atheros something or other - AR5B93) - is crap. I'm going to try using the USB card from my desktop PC and if that works, I'll buy another one like it for my nephew's system. This is ridiculous!

And surprise surprise, it worked first go - no messing around looking for drivers online - just plug, play and go! Might as well pick one up for my nephew's laptop as well then - less hassle than taking it back - if the integrated card is faulty that is. Maybe it's just crap as people have been saying - the card that is. The laptop itself seems great so far.

 

[Abhas]

Is your security key 0000000000 or something equally simple? I had an issue with my Dell notebook where it could not connect to the network because the key was too weak! I changed the password and it worked fine. I think it was the 1397 wireless card in it.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Is your security key 0000000000 or something equally simple? I had an issue with my Dell notebook where it could not connect to the network because the key was too weak! I changed the password and it worked fine. I think it was the 1397 wireless card in it.

No way mate - I'm not completely clueless when it comes to computing. My key is heavily encoded - numbers, symbols, upper and lower case, you name it - there's no way that's the problem.

Anyway, until or unless this can be sorted out, I'm going to sort him out with the same adapter I've got on my PC - it worked with his laptop no problem first go.

Happy Christmas to everyone anyway!

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Norton 2011 didn't seem to get very good reviews around the net and both guys who have it here don't like it, so even though the laptop came with a year's sub, I'm trialling several different Internet Security Suites, so I can decide which one to get for myself and nephew - I started with ESET Smart Internet Security 4.

 

[Chewie]

Just get Microsoft Security Essentials

 

[BackwardPoint]

AVG is your best friend

http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage

 

[sohum]

ESET is good.

Regarding the wireless card, that's weird that it cannot connect. I would personally think that you should be able to get some store credit or something for that. Carrying around a USB WiFi dongle in this day and age is ridiculous.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

ESET is good.

Regarding the wireless card, that's weird that it cannot connect. I would personally think that you should be able to get some store credit or something for that. Carrying around a USB WiFi dongle in this day and age is ridiculous.

Yeah, I'm going to have words with Argos about that, but I reckon they'll just want the whole thing back. I've got my suspicions though that the network card supplied with the laptop isn't actually Win 7 compatible.

I'm thinking of letting nephew keep my adapter, as it's very small so it can just stay in his laptop all the time - it's also giving him a consistently good connection (min four bars, usually five) and getting myself this or something similar:

Buy Netgear N Wireless USB Adapter. at Argos.co.uk - Your Online Shop for .

If it works with Win 7 64bit of course. I like the look of it because it has a little stand, so I could put it on a higher level than my PC and maybe get better reception.

ESET's a real bargain right now - around ?15 at play.com for a one year one user licence.

 

[MasterBlaster76]

OK, this laptop wireless card business is REALLY beginning to piss me off now! As I said before, I was going to buy a new USB WLAN dongle. I have bought two so far, neither wants to work on my nephew's system, or mine - I'd give him my adapter if I could get another to work on my system!

The latest I've tried is this one: GetNet GN-621U Wireless N USB Adapter.

It didn't work in either system - not by plug and play, not by using the driver disk, not by downloading new drivers - nothing - and on the box it says it supports Windows 7.

Now, the adapter I've been using for a long time: Tenda W311U worked straight away as soon as I plugged it into my nephew's system! No drivers, no bloody downloads - just plugged it in and worked first time. Naturally, I can't flaming well find that particular model in any stores. I also tried installing it under safe mode, as someone on Amazon said:

This is a great product once installed, I have a WIN7 laptop and this is meant to be WIN7 compatible, when i insterted the adapter it installed but it could not find any signal from the router, after checking things and changing settings etc out for almost 2 hours (I am an IT person also) I decided to uninstall this and booted laptop in safe mode, installed and bingo, all worked perfect, rebooted back to normal windows and still worked like a charm.

Great product, just needs to be installed via safe mode for proper installation.

Didn't work for me. Naturally.

Can you guys help?

 

[MasterBlaster76]

Strange: my nephew gets a solid five bars when in his room (upstairs from the router) - today he tried it downstairs in the lounge and it dropped to two bars. (?)

 

[MasterBlaster76]

OK, ESET's trial ends in 14 days. Overall, I like it - but for some reason, the scan gets stuck at 30% for ages at a certain point of my largest HDD. Kaspersky's next - 3 user licence is about ?22 at play.com, so cheaper than ESET if I want to secure my system and my nephew's laptop.