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One the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me a brand new Dell Computer!  Sounds pretty nice eh!  We are a big fan of dell as they provide very good quality machines at reasonable prices!  They are bound to have some great deals going on around the festive period!

Want to read review before you buy?  Check out the Dell Machine Reviews on the Brandstar Website!

Our retailer for the Second Day of Christmas is 123-reg.co.uk.  123-Reg sell domain names and hosting for websites.  So if you have to buy a present for a computer addict this would be a great present to get them blogging on the Internet in 2009!

Need some help with setting up a website?  Check out our Quick Tip Series on Basic Website Setup!

The question I get asked so often is how much is the cheapest laptop? Which isn’t as black and white as people seem to think (or maybe hope!). Using our favoured supplier Dell let’s look at a some prices and see what we get!

The Cheapest…

Going on Dell laptops for Home you can buy a laptop for £269 including VAT and Delivery. Not bad. But what will the laptop be any good for? Well this is an inspiron Mini 9 running Ubuntu (not Windows) and really is designed solely for internet, emails and maybe the odd word document. But you won’t get much more out of it than that. It is small with a 8.9″ screen so isn’t designed for people who use a PC/Laptop a lot and want an everyday machine. Something portable for checking emails etc whilst on holiday or travelling then this is great! Otherwise…read on.

The Cheapest we would recommend for the average user…

For the cheapest machines you need to look at the Inspiron laptops of the Dell range and they currently start at £329 inc VAT & Delivery. I personally would upgrade the processor to an Intel Core 2 Duo from the Celeron and also increase the memory to at least 2GB rather than 1GB so therefore giving a cost of £439. Not so much because the user would need the specification straight away but most people will look at this being a long term investment and not change it as often as some businesses would. So for the extra £110 I would say it is well worth it.

Sound advice? We believe so, but contact your local independant IT Supplier and see what they have to say too.

The Short Answer

£269 but I would say spend £439 if you want the machine for more than just emails and internet.

This tutorial will show you how run/schedule a Defragmentation on your Vista machine.

What is a Defrag?

If you use this analogy, your computer is like a filing cabinet, it starts all neat and tidy but over time it becomes messy and disorganised.  Defrag simply tidies things up which makes it easier for the computer to locate the information it requires therefore improving the performance of the machine.

Tip:

We suggest that you don’t have any programs running whilst running a Defrag.

How to run a Defrag

1. First of all click on the Start orb
   
2. Then select ‘Computer’
   
3. Right-Click on the drive which has the Label (C:) and select ‘Properties’.
   
4. Select the ‘Tools’ tab and then Defragment Now (Click to Enlarge Image)
   
5. Select Defragment Now (Click to Enlarge Image)
   
6. Select which disks you wish to be defragmented (we recommend that you Defragment all Disks).  Once you’ve selected click OK.
   
7. Your computer will now be running a Defragmentation.  This may take up to a few hours.  (Click to Enlarge Image)
   
8. You will be informed when the Defrag is complete.  At that point you can close the Defrag Window and continue using your computer as you normally would.

How to Schedule a Defrag:

On Vista, Defragmentation is set on a default schedule.  However, that schedule may not fit to your work style.  So here is how to change the Scheduled date and time.

1. Follow steps 1-4 from ‘How to run a Defrag’
2. Select ‘Modify Schedule’  (Click to enlarge Image)
   
3. Decide when you would like the Defrag to be Scheduled for by using the drop down menus (Click to Enlarge Image)
   
4. Click OK

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Acrobat.com is a brand spanking new site with some breakthrough and exciting features!  Acrobat.com is from Adobe and it provides a variety of online services such as; Word Processing, PDF Converting, File Sharing, Instant Messaging, Online Conferencing, File Managing and much more!  The five main features that Acrobat.com provides are:

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