External hard drive

[Bar Wench]

Someone find me one? They confuse me, I have no idea what I am looking for.  Round about the £50 mark or is that really too low?

[Barman]

Someone find me one? They confuse me, I have no idea what I am looking for.  Round about the £50 mark or is that really too low?

What colour do you need it to be...? 

[Bar Wench]

Well in an ideal world it would be pink! But I'm not terribly fussy seeing as my laptop is black.

[Barman]

Well in an ideal world it would be pink! But I'm not terribly fussy seeing as my laptop is black.

Get the black one then...

[Barman]

Or get this one from Amazon...?

[Bar Wench]

How does it work anyway? Once I plug it in do I just treat it as a usb memory stick thing?

[tel]

Try Maplin. I looked in the one in Sutton the other day and they had some good deals. Most are USB but can also be Firewire. A doddle to use, usually no setup required, just plug in and off you jolly well go.

[Darwins Selection]

How does it work anyway? Once I plug it in do I just treat it as a usb memory stick thing?

Yes. Mine does

(See, I know about some things tekky!)

[Snoopy]

So does it speed things up then? ~ I ask because Minor has a lap-top (Dell) that I am told I cannot buy more memory for ~ apparently this particular old model was not built to be able to up-grade memory or summat.
Anywhoo ~ would an external hard drive be a cheap option to speed things up and enable him to play games etc?

[Darwins Selection]

So does it speed things up then? ~ I ask because Minor has a lap-top (Dell) that I am told I cannot buy more memory for ~ apparently this particular old model was not built to be able to up-grade memory or summat.
Anywhoo ~ would an external hard drive be a cheap option to speed things up and enable him to play games etc?

You are now outside my small sphere of knowledge. 

[Uncle Mort]

An external hard drive is just a storage device, it won't speed up the computer. You need memory and/or a better graphics card. I would guess that the Dell laptop cannot take either.

[Snoopy]

An external hard drive is just a storage device, it won't speed up the computer. You need memory and/or a better graphics card. I would guess that the Dell laptop cannot take either.

The bit about memory and graphics cards is what the man in the shop said. I had hoped that perhaps an external hard drive would "speed" things up by taking some of the load but clearly my hopes are misguided.
In my ignorance I had assumed that more storage = more memory ~ this is based on the message that comes up on the screen saying "You have insufficent memory to play this game"

[Darwins Selection]

An external hard drive is just a storage device, it won't speed up the computer. You need memory and/or a better graphics card. I would guess that the Dell laptop cannot take either.

The bit about memory and graphics cards is what the man in the shop said. I had hoped that perhaps an external hard drive would "speed" things up by taking some of the load but clearly my hopes are misguided.
In my ignorance I had assumed that more storage = more memory ~ this is based on the message that comes up on the screen saying "You have insufficent memory to play this game"

How did you remember it said that? 

[Uncle Mort]

It's referring to the RAM (Random Access Memory) Sort of 'working' memory.

Just came across this interesting fact (to me anyway)

the chip in a chip-and-PIN credit card has roughly 30 times the processing power and 100 times the memory of the landing guidance computer on board the Apollo 11 Lunar Module.

[TG]

An external hard drive is just a storage device, it won't speed up the computer. You need memory and/or a better graphics card. I would guess that the Dell laptop cannot take either.

The bit about memory and graphics cards is what the man in the shop said. I had hoped that perhaps an external hard drive would "speed" things up by taking some of the load but clearly my hopes are misguided.
In my ignorance I had assumed that more storage = more memory ~ this is based on the message that comes up on the screen saying "You have insufficent memory to play this game"

That refers to RAM memory.

I may need an external hard drive soon to store porn music and similar.