This morning, I decided to rouse my computer from its long winter’s nap which it had been on since I left for vacation last Saturday. I was thrilled to discover that my monitor was no longer working. Just thrilled. Especially since I bought it only last year, and had been very careful with it since then.
Anyway, now I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’ve hijacked my brother’s monitor while he’s away for a couple more days, but I’m stuck with the question: Do I try to buy a new monitor with only a few weeks before I pack up and leave for Seattle? I’ll be living out of a suitcase and there won’t be any room for me to lug along a big old PC on the train, or while I’m couch-surfing.
So I started looking at laptops and then realized two important things: (1) I don’t know anything about laptops, and (2) I have almost no cash to play with. I don’t know why I didn’t start planning for this sooner. I guess the monitor problem sort of forces me to figure out what my computer plans will be while I’m travelling. I have every intention to keep updating my site (especially since it’s started making me some money) and to develop my writing in a lot of new directions.
Maybe some of you guys can give me laptop advice. Really, all I want is something I can type on. But as a friend pointed out, if I have a laptop, I’m going to wish I could do other things with it. And they’re right. So I guess at the very least I’d also want to be able to get online, play mp3’s, DVD’s and some minimal work in PhotoShop. I used to try to convince myself I needed really top of the line computers because I was such a hotshot. But really, I can get by with a lot less than the best.
So anyway, what should I look for in a laptop? Where can I get one super-cheap? How can I be sure if a used laptop is going to be worth the money? Does anybody out there have one they’d like to sell (or donate)? Any ideas, please let me know, as I’d like to get this sorted out as soon as possible so I can move forward with my other travel plans. Thanks!
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- Seattle Metaphysical Library Needs A Laptop Donation. Can you help?
- Laptop Suicide
- Laptop Reiki Attunement, Batch #0001A
- WHOOHOO!!
- The only thing I’m worried about
20 Comments
I just bought a new Dell laptop. My old Dell lasted 3 years, and still works except that it’s slow for my current needs. Several colleagues have IBM laptops, and the collective opinion seems to be that they’re OK, but not great.
They’re not cheap though. Perhaps you can find a good older one on ebay?
yeah, I’ve heard good things about Dell, except that Dell installs a LOT of unnecessary bullshit on the machine. Like A LOT. But my father’s is very nice. The one I have I got quite a deal on, used, but it’s a pretty good deal new too. it’s an ACER Aspire 3000 and it’s an exclusive buy at Circuit City for 700 or 800 bucks. ( i think )
It’s got a 1.8 AMD in it, CD/R and DVD player and half a gig of RAM. For the price its about the best you are going to do. Not the sturdiest machine, or the prettiest, but it has a nice and large display on it. Also, has no firewire and not a lot of fancy outputs (like a parallel for for a printer, etc.) but it’s served me very well.
Oh yeah, there is one fatal flaw though.. the battery eats a dick. It lasts for an hour and 15 minutes fully charged, which is awful. so you can either leave it plugged in most of the time or buy an 8 cell battery that lasts 2.5+ hours (by all accounts) for a hundred bucks.
This is it:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=34328
I found a forum page devoted to it that techy folk had put up, possibly on that same site. they were raving about it. i’ll email it to you if i can find it again..
Of course, my first advice is to get a nice iBook. It will do everything you need. You will be immune to viruses and spyware. You can pick up an older one from Apple for cheap. Once the Intel versions come out the old PPC machines will be even cheaper. There is tons of software available. I bought mine in the summer of 2002 and I still use it every day.
If you must have a PC, try the Dell auction site. I bought a very nice 1.2 14″ 30Gig Dell Latitude C610 a couple of months ago for $325. I run Gentoo and Windows XP Pro on it.
Don’t know how long you plan on staying in Seattle, but JK and I are looking to convert this old parking garage in our backyard into a smoking room / ghetto computer lab / library. We’re thinking of covering the open sky with some boards, setting up some shit computers down there for folks to check out their internet, etc. I want to see if they’ll last out in the open if they are put there to be public terminals. A little experiment of sorts.
How much are you looking to spend on a laptop?
JD: I don’t want any Mac stuff…
Garrett… I really don’t have any money to realistically spend. I’m doing this trip on a shoestring budget as is. If I do buy one, I’ll probably have to get another credit card or something.
Make sure you don’t keep it on your lap too long http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1395183,00.html
Yowzers! I find it surprising that in that article they only mention heat, rather than radiation being problematic. I guess the idea that computers give off any kind of harmful radiation is probably still a myth officially.
I can’t give you any advice on where to buy one since I live half way across the world, but what I can tell you is to take the time to look extensively into what sort of problems the laptop you’re looking at buying can develop. I had to purchase a laptop for school two years ago, and it is a piece of junk. The school decided to purchase it because it was cheaper than the company they had gone with in previous years while still with basically the same functions. Now, thanks to the decision made by our great technology division, our year levels laptops have become known as “fushitsu’s” around the grounds. One of the things I’m looking forward to the most when I finish school is being able to throw my laptop on the ground and jump on it comical style.
Moral: Make sure you do your research first.
I’ve got an old compaq armada that could conceivably be revived with linux. But it’s pretty old. Not even a cd-rom drive.
Barrel-bottom option, yeah, but it’s yours if you want it. (Maybe kick in for a slice of the postage.)
there’s lot’s of internet cafes in Seattle and the libraries should all have internet connected PCs. So you could probably do without taking anything. Make sure you know all your access passwords while you still have your desktop going, I sometimes forget userIDs and passwords after letting the browser and/or cookies handle it too long on a desktop.
Once in Seatle your odds of finding a cheep used laptop might go up too.
Try: RE-PC Recycled Computers (206) 623-9151 You’ll want at least 256meg of ram (you could live with 128 for awhile if need be), a pentium M running above 500Mhz (above 800Mhz pref), windows XP running clean w/no junk. Other features are less important. Use Wordpad if nothing else for saving text on the laptop. Be aware tho that older laptop batteries have a higher chance of being bad and expensive to replace, so make sure the AC adaper is working. Batteries will probably be fine, just something to check.
Zeno, thanks for the offer, but it does sound a bit too barrel-bottom, as you say. The more I look into the laptop option, the more I think I ought to actually put some money into it. Still nothing top of the line, but I don’t want to get stuck with more trouble than I started (like in Thoth’s case), you know?
Drew, thanks for the tip on the Seattle computer company, and all the rest. Sounds pretty cool.
saying you dont want any mac stuff is like saying you dont want your stuff to work properly. or virus free. or hassle free. or media free (and who needs that media stuff anyway!). macs are engineered for the design/publishing industry. as they say, people in the know, use macs. that said, linux is incredibly more powerful, but not recommended for new users. and whoever said windows xp can run with a RAM spec of 256MB is toaster drool, use 512 if you want to keep your sanity. and yes tim you’re correct, computers dont give off any radiation
transmitters, things that send and receive a radio frequency, those things emit radiation, wireless cards, access points, and the like. jd is right tim. a cheap computer is like a cheap whore =) (although for the record jd didnt say that much, i will take it as infered) what i would do if i was an intrepid young superstar is wait for apple to release the intel based macs in january or so. pick up the next generation of ibooks and run with it. a pc might (repeat: might) last three years, a mac is built to last for five. and for christ sake dont buy a dell! granted im a system administrator for a company with 120 employees and i deal with these things every day, I know nothing! 
happy 06,
andrew
I don’t want a Mac and I don’t care to engage in a pointless Mac/PC battle on this thread either.
I’ve seen winxp running on 256meg 433Mhz OLD celerons, it’s not fast but it runs and word-processes/web-browses/emails. but it’s not recomended.
More realisticly, Check this out, here’s a good deal, maybe you could get it shiped to your destination:
http://www.usedlaptops.com/hotdeals.htm
scroll down to the IBM ThinkPad T23 @ $550 and professionally reconditioned it’s a good deal. You should have no problem watching DVDs or AVI files.
Here’s another good deal:
http://www.usedlaptopsonline.com/productDetails.asp?productID=202
“Dell Latitude C610 Description: PIII 1.2Ghz, 256 Ram, 20.0 HDD, CD-Rom, 56k/NIC, 14.1″TFT, Floppy, WinXP PROFESSIONAL, AWESOME BUSINESS CLASS MACHINE!” @ $429.99 (no DVD here, but they might swap one in cheep)
==
you really want to be running winXP, it’s actually faster than 2000 and most importantly, it’s much safer from spyware/worms/etc as long as you keep it updated with the latest patches from windows update.
and that’s enough advice, have a good new year
I’ve used laptops for years. I had three Dells, and while Dell used to be a great product with great support, it is now a lousy product with even worse support.
Last time I had to buy a new one I went with IBM Thinkpad which I love. It’s only 4 pounds so I can travel with it easily, it doesn’t crash (the Dells used to crash quite often). I think it’s smart to pay a little more and get something that doesn’t fail, particularly since a computer is such a crucial thing for today’s living.
Used laptops are tricky so you want to be sure you get a warranty. IBM sells certified used equipment, here’s a link: http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stor...1&categoryId=2576396&qse.icue.
It seems there are some good deals here, and they come with a 3-month warranty.
happy new year everybody!
Tim: My old laptop’s battery doesn’t work and it can sometimes overheat, but other than that you’re welcome to it when you get here. It works as long as it is plugged in and it won’t overheat if you give it plenty of breathing room. It has great resolution, what 512MB memory(?), 20 gig HD, Pentium III @ 1GhZ and a loud cooling fan and dual boots XP and Linux.
I think if I got a new battery for it, which I believe to be around $200 or so and cleaned out the grates of the fan it would be a computer you would be proud to blog with. Alas, but not in Seattle — at least in public. So you’ll have to use it outside the city limits or on Microsoft’s campus where they’ll take pity on you and then who knows? Anyways, ain’t no skin off my back at all — it sits in my closet as it is and does precisely nothing.
You could just ship your PC as well. I don’t see it costing anymore than $50 or $60 and once you get to Seattle I highly doubt finding you a monitor would be any trouble.
Hey JK: I just sent you an email about this.
Also, to anybody else who’s still wondering, I’ve solved the laptop situation thanks to a little help (okay a lot of help) from a friend. So thanks for all the tips and offers everybody. I certainly appreciate it.
Dell makes me crazy, especially what they term “support.” The guys at work love them to bits though, plus they often run end-of-sale-life specials on stuff when they bring out the bigger better modle. They also do some financing, which helps.
Apple also has financing. I’ve had my iBook g4 for three years and it still works great with media and everything. My machine’s a glorified DVD player, word processor and instant messenger, so if that’s what you’re looking for, it’ll be fine for that.
Referbed units are OK, but make sure you get one from a place that provides comprehensive hardware warentees. Three to four years is sort of the half-life on a lot of stuff now days, and if you get more than that out of it, it’s the technological equivolent of your cat living for 24 years. Getting referbed units from an actual apple or dell or gateway dealer is sometimes the best way to go (kind of like getting a used car from the dealership, instead of joe schmoe down the street). It’ll cost a little more than going to joe schmoe, but it’ll save you from having to duplicate this effort and money again in six months or a year because the processor fried or the mother board has decided to return to the mother ship.
STAY AWAY from computer shows if you arn’t good at wheeling and dealing and dont;’ have someone with you who knows a LOT about computers. A lot of ripoffs happen there.
Hope you find something useable!
Just call me Professor Toaster Drool. I’ve been running Windows XP on my laptop for four years at 256MB without any trouble at all. Rarely crashed it, no hassles installing new hardware, software magically worked when I installed it, no viruses, no spyware.
Though I recently started dual-booting it on a Debian Linux build, so I’m a fancy pants nerd. That may explain it.
I am the Zen computer wizard, level 20. Oooohm.