BellaBoo

Walmart has laptops for $298. I bought two of the $298 ones last year and they are still working like new. I bought another one yesterday to have one to take to tote around away from home. No personal files on it, just quilting programs. First thing I do is uninstall Norton anit virus software or any anti virus software that offers you a trial. Download AVG free and forget about having a virus. Do not uninstall the free trail of MS Office or Word. That may remove a file needed for other functions like windows installer.

BellaBoo

I posted this on Links and Resources and it was moved here. If I had posted it here it would have been moved to Links and Resources. LOL

romanojg

Great that you are removing Norton; it's a royal pain and that's being nice. I work in the IT field and me and alot of my co-workers use Microsoft's free Window's Essential anti virus. It's easy to download; it'll check your pc to make sure you get the right version and it's easy to install. I have no problems with it. It's up to you about the trial version of MS office; sometimes it's free for a couple of months and sometimes its not. You'll probably want to have some type of word program and some come with Works installed and its fine. You can get the student version of MS Office at a cheaper price than the regular and unless you are using it for business it's fine. I've gotten it at the Navy Base for yrs until this past yr when Microsoft gave the employees in the IT dept where I work the ability to buy it really cheap. I have two laptops, one regular 17in for when I'm digitizing or working from home and a netbook if I want to take my stuff and not use a large laptop. You can also hook up a monitor to your laptop when at home if you want a larger screen to use.

romanojg

I guess it was moved because there was no link to click on. Not really sure as to why things are done but glad your message is out there.

Peckish

Ditto for Windows Essentials. My husband also works in the IT field and this is what he installed on my laptop when I got it.

ptquilts

not sure if you mean Microsoft Security Essentials -- I have that on my laptop and it did NOTHING to stop malware from getting on. No, to tell the truth, it told me something had been downloaded. If I blinked I would have missed it. I want something that will STOP bad stuff from being downloaded. Essentials did NOT do that.

Nanamoms

Does the Walmart computer run on Windows 7? Starter, Home or Pro? I have to keep one Windows XP because some of my embroidery software will only run on XP ...luckily my son's good friend is in IT and he can usually work around any problems. He installed Firefox and Microsoft Essentials on one of mine that was having problems...the newest one. I then installed it on my desktop and my older Laptop.

I might go check out the Walmart one as I would hate to lose my laptop that has all my embroidery designs stored (although I do have a external hard drive with them saved on it) Be my luck something would happen to the external HD!! LOL

the old one

hank you for the information, I really want a laptop, husband thinks I don't need it--we'll see. The geek squad at some of the stores do not speak my language, I tell them what I want, they tell me that's not possible, but my friends have it on their equipment, because family members have helped. Is it because my hair is white and I use a four-prong cane?

lclang

I bought one of those Walmart wonders and I am taking it back. There is no capability for using or burning CDs and many of my embroidery machine designs come on CDs. The volume is maxed out and I still can't hear it. The box says it is actually a "notebook" which in my mind is a smaller/cheaper version of a laptop. I did call customer support and found a sleepy person who didn't seem to know what to do and I had to keep saying, "Are you there?" to get him to respond.

BellaBoo

The box says laptop on the ones at the local store here. Notebooks usually don't have cd capabilities and are for very basic use. Notebooks are usually under $300 every day. This is a special buy for a laptop.