My old 2006 Acer: Replace or Upgrade?

[irishScott]

So I got an Acer Travelmate 8200 back in the day, and have gotten 6 good years of usage out of it. However, it recently started having this awful glitch where it won't boot reliably, and I usually have to switch it on/off at least 7 times to get to a working Desktop. Worst of all, it will randomly reboot for no apparent reason when I'm typing. This makes doing any sort of productive work a major hassle, and I've determined that it is a hardware malfunction, probably with either the motherboard or CPU. (I've installed multiple operating systems, and common bootable tools like Gparted that used to work no longer boot up).

The good news is that in my searches I've encountered a highly rated ebay retailer who apparently has a decent amount of travelmate 8200 parts of all types left over. So basically I could completely refurbish my laptop for < $200 given what I need.

I'm a college kid on a relatively constrained budget, so if I go for an upgrade it would have to be less than $400. The specs for my old travelmate are here: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2697, sans the hard drive which I upgraded to a 7200 RPM raptor a couple of years back. While the specs are diminutive by comparison to modern laptops they serve my functions adequately. (I have a more modern Desktop for gaming and such).

So my question is, not having in-depth knowledge of the modern laptop world, would it be worth it to upgrade given my budget constraints, or should I buy the components and refurbish?

 

[Ketchup]

A couple years ago I was in a similar quandary with a Gateway. The problem with those older Acers (well almost any Acer for that matter) is that they are built cheap. I will just be afraid that I would spend $200 on a four year old laptop that was built cheap from day one, then something else would go.

Plus, since you are in college, you have to think about how may hours of studying would fixing this thing rob you of?

Personally, we went to Tiger Direct, got a nice Lenovo G series for $400, and my wife and I couldn't be happier with it.

 

[Dessert Tears]

This makes doing any sort of productive work a major hassle, and I've determined that it is a hardware malfunction, probably with either the motherboard or CPU.

I would be worried about sinking money into that hardware problem. I fixed up a [thread=2210460]5-year-old Dell E1705[/thread], but it was working to start, just slow. I got a used hard drive for free and an N wireless card for $20.

You can get an i3 14-15" notebook for around $400.

 

[Spicedaddy]

Get a new one.