The laptop that has the inbuilt parallel port is the Dell D800 and that has a P4 M 1.7Ghz CPU - that has this 10 sec tick still on it even with Win2K.

The laptop that now works is an HP nc4400 but that has a Centrino Dual Core 2.0GHz CPU. This is the one I have no problems with.

The reason I don't want a full blown set-up is the garage is
.a. my garage is not heated and gets quite damp, that not good for the PC
.b. its not attached to the house and was recently broken into.