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Good price for a used laptop?

D

Diademed

Senior member
Same Question, New Laptop

Yet another laptop. Little cheaper, little bit inferior. Whatcha think?
Specs:
- T20 IBM ThinkPad
- Pentium 3m 700 Mhz /w Speedstep
- 256 Meg PC100 Memory
- Hitachi 20 Gig 4200 RPM Drive
- 14" LCD
- S3/Savage IX /w 8 Megs & S-Video Out

- Pre-loaded /w Windows 2000 OEM & includes COA. Has all current updates.

The installed battery holds currently approx. 1h:30m on normaly use, i.e word, internet, etc. Around 45m when watching videos. It also includes an AC Adapter and Sony Headphones.

Asking $ 200 /w Shipping


Old lappy-- passed on
Anyway, the specs follow, and the asking price is $315 shipped. Decent, great, blah? Resellable to break even if I get it, then decide I don't need it?

Thinkpad T23
P3 1.13 Ghz
30 GB IBM/hitachi hard drive
128mb RAM
CDRW drive
NO WIRELESS
14" XGA LCD)

I would jump on this.... the LCD has some issues..

Whatcha' think?


Old machine, passed on.

Celeron 850MHz
100MHz bus
256 Memory
20G HD
S3 Graphics Twister
Screen Area/Colors 1024x768 pixels, 16 million colors
Dvd drive and extra CD Drive
Floppy Drive, 2 USB's
VIA Technologies VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter
Actiontec Electronics Actiontec PRISM Wireless LAN USB Card
CXT AC97 SoftV92 Voice Model with SmartCP
Windows XP Operating System
2 Batteries (1 Ni-MH & 1 Li-ion)
 
Looks OK to me for $300. Just beware of battery life -- older batteries don't keep the same charge as new ones. You'll spend $100 for a new battery if you end up needing one.

 
hmmm, it's just me, but I would go for one of those $499 laptop deals and I think you would do a lot better. It's a $200 difference, but in my opinion it would be worth it. I mean celeron 850 and 256mb of ram I don't think would be zippy at all in XP. Maybe in 2000 or Win98, but not enough for XP imo.

Not to mention that you would have a new item with warranty 'just in case'.
 
I'd get a $500-600 laptop that's twice as fast and comes with WinXP and a warranty.

(Actually I'd probably get a $1200+ laptop with gaming video 🙂 but for a cheap laptop I'd buy new.)
 
If you're trying to get a cheap laptop to do basic stuff like webbrowsing, accessing email, doing reports or coding, then this laptop is fine and it's pretty cheap. It really depends on what you want to do with it. Why get a machine which costs almost twice as much when you don't need it?

If you don't really have a use for the laptop and just think it's a good deal, then you might want to save your cash. It's not a good to compare a used laptop to a desktop because it will cost you more for the laptop for even half the machine, and they tend to have weaker batteries after being that old, but that's not too bad of a deal either for a cheap portable machine. If you sold it a year later you could still probably get around $200-250 for it so your return is pretty good (sell it to a student next year around when school starts back up as an internet/report writing machine).

If you want a more powerful machine, then save your money, but if not, this is not a bad deal for an older laptop.
 
That's kinda what I'm thinking.

I have a desktop, reasonably equipped, as well as a linux server, so a powerful laptop is the lasts of my needs.

I was thinking of getting it, then seeing how much I actually use it, and if I don't, then turning around and putting it back up for sale.

I've noticed machines on the FS/T forums here that are inferior to this one being put up for ~$400 and up.

All in all, I'm not decided. Would I be able to get $300 + shipping off a forum? maybe-- who knows... Do I really need a laptop? (does anyone?) I just havent made up my mind yet. It'd come in handy every once in a while, but then, I'm not the kind of guy to haul every little gizmo to class to help out. Crappy battery life on laptops doesnt make me that happy either. Honestly....come up with something better.

Whatcha- guys think?
Would I be able to get $300 + shipping off a forum?
 
I'd generally agree that getting a discount Dell or something for ~$500 would be much better. It would probably be lighter, have a better screen, a battery that lasts more than 12 minutes, and a warranty. Not to mention be able to run XP.
 
I work for an auction house, we have a guy who consigns Dell Inspiron 700m laptops on a regular basis. Specs on them listed below

Pentium 3 700mhz
256 ram
9-12 GB harddrives
integrated video
Win XP (from Semi-Shady enterprise edition CD)
Office XP (from Semi-Shady enterprise edition CD)
CD / DVD Drive
Docking station

I've seen these sell at auction as low as $225 and as high as $525. As for performance they work well for web browsing, basic office functions, not real fast, but functional. A potential place to get real cheap laptops is from government surplus auctions, I believe that's where he's getting these from. He's sold about 10 of them through our auction house. He won't tell me all the details but I know he made at least $50 on the cheapest..that's after our 25% commision on them. You can check here to see if there are any near your location GSA Auctions
 
If youre doing basic stuff, like pretty much anything besides games or vid creation, youll be fine with it. Im on an old Acer with a Celly 500 and 192 ram with a linksys wireless card and it handles stuff like browsing, mail, playing avi movies, ripping cds to load up your mp3 player etc. With an older used one youll be inclined to use it more places and harder because if you break it youre not out as much (thats the way I look at it anyway). I threw a new battery at it a few months ago for $70 so now it tends to go everywhere and thats the whole point of notebooks.
 
LCD issues, no warranty, P3 CPU, no built in wifi, and does it even come with Win XP?

Just get the Sunday paper for all the Toshiba/Compaq/Dell deals, or check Hot Deals here, or visit GottaDeal.com and wait for crazy Dell coupons.
 
How often will the LCD go bad with minor issues like that?

I'll be running linux, so I could care less about XP, but it is a thinkpad, and $300 is a pretty good price for a P3 1.13 chip.
 
$500-$600 refurb will give me better performance especially in XP. Even for basic usage, 256MB isn't just enough not to mention the 100 FSB.
 
It's that bad? -- just because of what it looks like, or the fail rate of it?

Granted, jiggz, I don't need XP -- putting an extra 256 stick in there should suit me fine for RAM, Ubuntu isn't quite as bloated as Windoze.
a $600 refurb is twice as much, too. =)
 
The screen is the most expensive part of the laptop to fix you do not want one w/ a dmged screen it kills the resale value and makes it more likely to fail.
 
wait, was that drawn in? Or is that edited with paint? If the black marks were just edited with paint, then I don't see any problem with it.....
If the LCD is bad though, its only worth 220 bucks.
 
The black marks were drawn in. 😉 they circle a few issues.... the main one is the light spot at the bottom, though there apparently is a rub mark from the trackpointer.
 
Originally posted by: GamerExpress
Oops I voted for you to get until I saw the picture of the monitor....ROFL

Don't buy that dude.
Click to expand...

Hah I did the same. Actually, I agree I think I would get a cheap $400-$500 new laptop.
 
So the light spots mean the monitor is on the fritz?

Hmm.....

Maybe I'll cancel with the guy, I guess. Those black spots are drawn in, the only real flaw is the spot at the bottom.
 
I'm not sure then. The screen looks perfectly fine to me, and 300 bucks for a thinkpad is pretty good 🙂
 
Hmmm 😉

that's sort of what I am thinking, Hacp --

Everyone seems to go crazy trying to get as far away from that laptop as they can once they see the LCD.

=)

I wonder if the light spot is a sign of failure maybe?
 
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