What can I do with this laptop?

[Markeh]

Right, I'm a caring nice lad, I think.. My dad has been on about getting a laptop for a while, but money's been tight. I've bought him a Fujitsu Siemens Amilo D1845 from Gumtree for £50. The specs:

Uniwill 257SA0 board
Pentium 4 Mobile @ 3.2GHz
512MB DDR333 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (128MB)
80GB IDE HDD
15.4" Widescreen (1280x800)
DVD-RW
Wi-Fi
XP Home SP3

Not stunning, I know, but for what he uses a PC for (web browsing, email, Tetris, Office 2007), it is more than enough.

How can I make it nice for him? I plan to put 1GB RAM in, but I don't intend on a reinstall, as Office 2007 plus some other handy programs were already installed. If I must reinstall, I would want to use a separate 2.5" HDD, just incase it didn't work out, which I would put Windows 7 on.

The casing is a bit tatty, and the base is cracked in places, plus, there is a giant flap on the bottom for access to CPU, GPU, RAM, Wi-Fi, HDD, (instead of 3 or 4 separate flaps). This is missing about 10 screws, out of 13. 2 of the ones I have are the same size, one's an odd size. Fujitsu won't tell me what size they all are... any ideas?

I also want some decent free games, such as puzzle games, stuff similar to Brain Training, which he always plays on his DS, and anything to do with music trivia would be nice.

It's a speedyish laptop as is, and I do like it, and I just want to make it look nice for him. The lid's scuffed, considering a lid decal, I would like to use that 3M Di-Noc stuff, but my dad reckons it'll be a pain to do. It won't be, but I can't be bothered to argue.

So far, what I've done is:

Uninstalled all the non-useful crap from the system
Put CCleaner, Chrome and Avast on
Configured it to connect to our network

Any more tips?

[Jin]

He isn't very computer literate half the issue is he spends so much time torrenting we keep getting viri, spyware, adware etc.

I would reinstall the OS, there is loads of crap that CCleaner can miss, that can be left behind from uninstalls and god knows what else the previous user has been doing on that machine and what other unnecessary services are still running. I am sure you can weave the magical power that gets you office 2007 for free.

I would leave XP on it, dont bother with vista or win7. After the reinstall go find a win xp optimization guide which will tell you what things can be disabled that can help improve performance (like the fax modem service).

Sort the screws out, as one drop could cause a severe explosion of plastic and circuit boards as I have learnt before. Best way is to remove one of the screws and visit a hardware store, I prefer using independent tool shops as they usually have the experience and time of day to actually help you as oppose to the spotty 16 year old part time sales assistant. The odd screw I wouldnt worry about.

In terms of hardware upgrades, consider what your dad would really use the laptop for. No point in making ram and hard drive upgrades if your dad is just doing basic office, email and gaming. Also mobo may not support that much ram.

Try finding game emulators such as emulators for gameboys as you can find a massive library of games as well for free. Hours of fun.

Di-noc would be worth considering as it may improve structure if the case is really that bad just be cautious of heat vents, access, panels etc otherwise consider araldite.

If your dad is as bad as mine when it comes to internet browsing consider Ubuntu, I havent had a virus complaint for 14 months now.

[Markeh]

Well, there was one program I wanted to save off the machine, it was in an .iso format, burnt it to disk, put it in another machine, and it's come up as a "24 file". No idea what that is...

I haven't got an XP disk to reinstall with (well, I have a Dell one, and the laptop has its COA intact), that's why I suggested the 7 disk that I do have.

Don't need to worry about my dad being too illiterate, he's not gonna download crap. If this were my mum, however....