Best 2nd-hand laptop?

[heatemyfather]

Brand / model / specs - what's a good one to look for? Is it worth spending any money on 2nd-hand or better to buy new where laptops are concerned?

I see 2nd-hand laptops for sale for around £200 but their specs are nowhere near new ones, like half the speed or less and about the same on RAM and HD size. After upgrading these things one might as well have spent a bit extra still to buy new.. yes? No? What are your thoughts?

[sdk]

WRT the current news, used PCs that contain millions of personal details have a premium attached, if only it's whatever you can screw the news media for, for the story

As for laptops, I've never bothered with them. Complete waste of money. I use desktops - far more bang for the buck - and a memory stick (AKA 'pen drive').

Need to work on the move? Use a pen and a notepad. Optional: learn how to mindmap.

[dave1066]

Depends on what you want to use it for.
I use a old DELL CPI 300mhz 256mb RAM running XP for most things and very happy with it.
Cost me £50 and I use it more than my desktop with a dual core running Vista.

[heatemyfather]

Cost me £50 and I use it more than my desktop with a dual core running Vista.

Vista you say? That thing sounds counter-productive, little wonder you use the old one more!

Actually, the old stuff may be too simple for some people's tastes these days but we all managed with it somehow back then so it can't be all that bad, there were fewer moving parts too so less to go wrong.

[stringersystems]

There's only been 2 maybe 3 moving parts anyway, always has, HDD and Fan(s)

[dave1066]

Vista you say? That thing sounds counter-productive, little wonder you use the old one more!

Actually, the old stuff may be too simple for some people's tastes these days but we all managed with it somehow back then so it can't be all that bad, there were fewer moving parts too so less to go wrong.

Took me a year before I changed my PC to Vista, I have got use to it at last and would not change back.
I Like the solid state hardrives in laptops, silent. Its a shame that they are so small and alot of money. I have tried a CF card as a hardrive in my old Dell laptop and not very good.

[Spyder1942]

I always leave my desk top at home as i cant get it in my laptop bag.lol.

[heatemyfather]

There's only been 2 maybe 3 moving parts anyway, always has, HDD and Fan(s)

My C64 didn't have any moving parts... only in the tape deck and disk drive but they were peripherals and tough as nails.

Solid State Drives are not really ready for mass market distribution, as you say they are currently too small and too expensive. Give it a couple of years, they'll be replacing hard drives more and more. Perhaps they'll be installed like Sim cards in mobile phones, or use a new interface similar to eSata, so one can simply take the SSD with you and plug into a computer anywhere to have all your files and OS ready to run.

[canuckbid]

Hello everyone. It's my experience that we all buy way more computer than we need. There is only 3 or 4 programs that can actually ultilize the dual core as the code needs to be writen in the program for the dual core to use. Funny eh? We all think we need blistering speed. Maybe if you worked on the space program you would need it. The average user doesn't need that mili second faster processor. Look at your bus speed. If your computer has to access ram it goes through the bus and thats all the speed you are going to get. Doesn't matter if you have a 2.0 or 3.0 processor speed. If your bus speed is 500 or 800 that's all you'll get as soon as your processor runs out of room in its little cache. Myself I use all of 30g of my 120g harddrive. I played on a pentium 4 the other day and it was twice as fast as my Toshiba dual core. Of course depending on how much you have loaded for programs will change your performance. The next one I buy will be brand new and I will install my own operating system. Linux.
I would buy used but make sure it has at least 256 ram or 512. Most programs want that now. Hope my 2 bits worth helped someone.

[canuckbid]

Hello. I'm no expert so no argument here. I do know that AMD is a threat to Pentium. They have a shorter, fatter pipeline and can process more imformation with a slower clocked # processor than pentium. Pentium has a narrow pipeline and clock there processor a higher number. A lower number AMD can be just as fast as a Pentium with a bigger number. Yes I've checked some benchmarks. I understand that your processor does have its own cache, but when it runs out it has to go through the bus to access more ram. The new processors have alot more cache than the old models for sure. I guess we could go on all day discussing pro's and con's of what to buy. Sounds like both processor manufactor's are against the wall when it comes to speed. They are dropping the curve on them. Who wants a computer that has the fan running all the time because the processor runs too hot? As far as gamimg goes you are better off with a console I think. Or you are forever buying updated video cards and spending a fortune to be able to play the new games. For example the xbox 360 has 3 processor's and you cann't get that zap in a laptop yet. They run too hot and thats why they are crashing on everyone after awhile. As far as a pentium 4 goes I have no idea if its bad or not. Its a processor that can be updated, where a celeron processor can not be updated. Have a super day from Canada!