Wi-fi Downloader

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The Zune Guy

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Ireland (Come on 'd Paddys)
I live in rural Ireland and as a result can't get any broadband, however I still need to download large updates for windows, music, videos and the occasional rapidshare files etc. Up until now I have borrowed a friends laptop when I needed it and just gone to the local town where I can download using relatives wifi connections. However after a close shave with a virus on the laptop I now have to organise a suitable downloader. Can anyone suggest a laptop suitable for this at the lowest possible price Also would PDA's or phones such as the N95 8GB with wifi be suitable for 1 or 2GB downloads?
 
Any laptop would do... Get a second and older, PIII even, laptop and put linux on it to keep it light and bug free. With usb drives being so cheap, you could dump it to one of them and be extra safe.

No idea on a phone...
 
I got a Pentium 3 laptop on eBay a few years ago for >$180. After giving it a $30 WiFi PCMCIA card and Ubuntu Linux, it makes a great downloading/web browsing/IM chatting/file managing/photo viewing/movie watching laptop for cheap. Unless you plan on doing intensive stuff (gaming, video editing, photo editing, multi-tasking), all you'll ever really need is a light Pentium 3 or so laptop (up until a month or two ago when I got my new laptop, my Pentium 3 laptop was my primary computer even though I had two faster desktops, the convenience of the laptop outweighed the speed of the desktops).

A PDA with WiFi would work too, I have a Dell Axim X50v PDA with WiFi and a 16GB CF card, it would be OK for small downloads but big 1+ GB downloads would take a while on it's 802.11b 11mbps max connection. I'd suggest going to eBay and picking up an older Pentium 3 laptop, those are decent PC's especially for Ubuntu Linux and they're not too expensive.
 
Why spend any money at all? Just get a better firewall and anti-virus program. Also get a decent download manager to download files rather than using a web browser. This is if your friend will still let you use his laptop.
 
Having your own laptop would be a benefit even if you still can use his laptop. I suggest using Ubuntu Linux on it because Linux is unaffected by Windows viruses and has very few native viruses. You're pretty much immune to viruses when using a Linux system. However, a Linux system can still get corrupted and infect Windows systems if they get infected files from it. I was looking for a Linux virus scanner that could scan for Windows viruses but haven't found anything yet.
 
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