Looking for suggestions for Turion Barebones Laptop

[jonnyGURU]

I currently have an Acer Travelmate 4400.

The thing is LITERALLY falling apart. The monitor is held on by only one hinge, there's pieces of plastic broken off all over the place. The finish is scuffed and scratched beyond belief. It's finished.

Problem is, it works perfectly and the performance is all I need.

So I'd like to pull the AMD Turion ML-34, the 1GB SODIMM and 120GB hard drive out of it and throw the pieces into a barebones.

Why a barebones? I figured if I don't have to pay for a CPU, RAM and HDD that I could save a good deal of money, right?

I'd like something with at least a 15.4" monitor (that's what I have now and I'm used to it) and at least a Radeon X700 chipset (again, what I'm used to.)

Any help? Please?

 

[jonnyGURU]

This should work:

http://www.avadirect.com/produ...ls_parts.asp?PRID=7184

But good lord that's expensive!

I looked at some MSI's that were cheaper, but they're SATA and my drive is PATA.

If I have to buy another hard drive, I might as well buy a whole notebook.

 

[WombRaider]

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
This should work:

http://www.avadirect.com/produ...ls_parts.asp?PRID=7184

But good lord that's expensive!

I looked at some MSI's that were cheaper, but they're SATA and my drive is PATA.

If I have to buy another hard drive, I might as well buy a whole notebook.

You can get a brand new decent laptop for $700. I think you're just better of selling the old parts and buying a new notebook.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: WombRaider

Originally posted by: jonnyGURU
This should work:

http://www.avadirect.com/produ...ls_parts.asp?PRID=7184

But good lord that's expensive!

I looked at some MSI's that were cheaper, but they're SATA and my drive is PATA.

If I have to buy another hard drive, I might as well buy a whole notebook.

You can get a brand new decent laptop for $700. I think you're just better of selling the old parts and buying a new notebook.

Link?

I was sort of expecting that sort of response, but (like what I found out when shopping for the Acer I ended up) my definition of "decent" is different than others?

Of course, I have considered getting a whole laptop and just putting my RAM and HDD in it (assuming the new laptop was PATA.)

 

[jonnyGURU]

Ok.. Did some searching...

I found this Compaq:

http://www.onsale.com/shop/det...sale&source=bwbfroogle

Which I could possibly score for less here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/COMPAQ-PRE...VWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

The CPU is faster and it has just as much RAM. And since the 1GB is in one slot, I can populate the second slot with my RAM.

But the HDD is small and has XP Media and it's SATA. So I can't just slip in my 120GB PATA XP Pro hard drive. I have a 2.5 to 3.5" adapter and can put my HDD in an enclosure, but I'm not sure if True Image supports USB enclosures for copying drives over. Hmm....