My First Laptop
 

Hey all,

I'm really dumb when it comes to computers. I like to pretend I know a lot about them, but I really don't. So I just got a laptop today for Christmas.

It's a Toshiba Satellite A100. I looked up a few reviews about it on the internet and they seemed favourable. Is it any good? Anyone here have one?

Next question. What do I need for it? Is there anything I should get? I'm not going to be playing a lot of games on it, but I do want to use the internet. I suppose I will be wanted a wireless internet connection, right? How do I go about getting that?

Any other things I should get? Anything I should know about it? Thanks in advance.

depends on the model a100. some are great, some not so, and im sorry to say a couple sub par. the 100-TA7 are really nice as are the CF1

I’ve never been a fan of toshitba's... I mean Toshiba. Hopefully there quality and service has improved over the years. if your looking for high quality, and great service (and expense) look towards Lenovo (they just bought IBM)

I've had three Tosh laptops - bought one years ago, upgraded a few years later, and got a new one from the insurance company when my daughter dropped the old one.

Not had a problem with them and they hook straight onto my home wi-fi access point (using the on board Centrino chip).

Thanks for the info Daniel, but none of that gibberish meant anything to me. Right now I'm on the internet because I'm stealing some guys wireless connection. Is that bad? What happens if I get caught? How would I get caught?

I have a question and I don't want to start up a new thread for it, so I'll ask it here.

I need a good photo editor program. My parents always want pics of the kids and I want a quick easy program that I can load the photo's into, and edit and ship off. I have the Windows Media program for XP, is that good enough?

Windows Media Player is mainly for playing music and videos, not for photo editing.

The most well known photo editing application is Adobe Photoshop, but it is expensive.

Two popular free photo editing applications are Paint.NET and GIMP. Of the two, I would recommend Paint.NET as it would probably be simpler to use.

What kinds of editing? Like just resizing images? I'd recommend Irfanview for that :)

Do you have a wireless router? If so, you can connect to that with the A100.

It's RUDE, and in a way, it's THEFT.

If the owner is tech savy, he may notice what you're doing and could cut you off.

That said - he is a bit of a fool to not have secured his connection, so he may not notice.

As far as hardware goes i have no suggestions at all. Stealing bandwidth from a neighbor or whatever from over the wireless isnt nice but... as long as your just browsing normal websites and not downloading stuff or looking at goat porn or anything creepy... no big deal he should of locked his wireless anyway. and the very little bandwidth you use for normal web browsing he wont ever miss. But you should get your own wireless router.

If i was you i would get firefox. Its a free webbrowser to use instead of internet explorer. you can get it http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ there Can get lots of plugins for it for free to stop ads and annoying stuff like that.

You should also get a firewall. I use the free version of zone alarm and it works pretty well and is easy to figure out. you can download it here. http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten..._freedownloads
just make sure to pick the free one.

The most important thing you need to get though is a good high quality desktop wallpaper. http://www.duiops.net/seresvivos/gal...oat%20Kids.jpg
Thats agood one everyone should use!

I'd say he's got a <15% chance of being tech-savvy and a <5% chance of anything actually happening to him. It's not like his neighbor is that crazy guy that wrote a PERL script that mirrored all websites his neighbors viewed.

Just don't start torrenting or sucking up mega bandwidth and you're cool.

Having done a little research, I feel that the people who got wireless should have locked theirs up, and I don't mind mooching off theirs. And I also think that there are people out there who get wireless and intentionally leave it unlocked for others to use. Do you think that's possible? I do and I think that's what the person who I'm mooching off of is thinking.

Oh, and Plaid13, that's some sweet goat wallpaper!

Errr... it's not really a matter of you minding, it's a matter of them minding. As I said, this is not too serious, but your logic is fallacious.


It's possible (it is in my case), but I would say that it's a 95% chance that's not the case by any means. It's almost certain that they're computer illiterate folk who could care less. Unless I'm missing some vital details like the SSID being named "FreeNetwork" or something insane like that, I'm certain it's not intentionally left open.

all your points are well taken.