Best Used Laptop

[Clocker]

Looking for recommendations on a decent used laptop. I don't need anything faster than about 500mhz or so. I'd like to have a laptop for my living room so that I can WiFi out my cable modem to it.

Battery life also isn't a concern because I'd be willing to keep it plugged in.

I want something cheap as this is just a luxury. Ideas?

Thanks,

C

 

[Mercutio]

Thinkpad 540. Celeron or P2 at around 500MHz. Can be configured as a light subnotebook, or you can lug around the ultrabase (which weighs about four pounds) for a second battery and two extra disk drives. The screen is only 12.1", but it's nice and sharp.

 

[Adcadet]

didn't Anand or Sharky review one or two "Desknotes" - basically laptops without batteries that use desktop CPUs to give good performance at a good price while sacrificing portability. But those I could see being a bit expensive (~$1000?)

 

[Clocker]

Thanks Merc & Andy.

In general, what laptops have the best long-term durability? The IBM as you suggested?

C

 

[Adcadet]

From the people I've talked with, it seems IBM has a reputation for high quality stuff (though often expensive) - good manuals, good design, durable stuff. I know a guy who travels alot (4-6 days/week out of town) and works for a large company that gets loads of Compaq laptops, and he swears Compaqs aren't very reliable.

But, that's just what I've heard.

 

[e_dawg]

I have heard similarly good things about IBM as well. However, my personal experience with them is a mixed bag.

The older ThinkPad 385XD I have has always been very stable software and driver wise. But the hardware has been unreliable. I had to send in my ThinkPad twice during the first year of ownership. Luckily, it was just before my warranty expired. Both the floppy drive and the LCD screen died. My friend, who bought the exact same laptop a week after I did, had even worse luck. His motherboard, ports, floppy, and CD-ROM drive were all flaky. Even smelled smoke coming it from a short circuit or something. Sent it in just after the warranty expired and was quoted some absurd price (~$500 US) to replace the flaky motherboard.

The newer ThinkPad A or T 20 I had at work last year was reliable from a hardware perspective, but the software and drivers were very unstable. Daily crashes at one point, and even at its best it would crash twice a week -- and this is with Win2k, and OS which I find to be exceptionally stable (193 days of uptime on my home PC).

Some of my friends recommend Toshiba. I found some of their Satellite laptops to be flimsy and of low quality during brief usage.

My Sony VAIO slimline Z-505 has been a mixed bag. It has proven to be quite reliable hardware wise, although it was getting to be a nightmare software and driver wise after a year of use. Turns out it was that god-awful Windows Millenium. As soon as I installed Win2k and the necessary drivers and Sony DLL's, it has been very stable and a pleasure to use. Only 3.75 lbs, magnesium alloy case, sleek and sexy. The only things I don't like about it are: (1) memory capacity limited to 192 MB, (2) loud cooling fan (the loudest I've heard in a laptop to date). Battery life is disappointing, but I haven't had the pleasure of using a laptop with exceptional battery life yet.

 

[Mercutio]

IBM, Dell and Gateway make reasonably good stuff. All have ups and downs within their product lines, but I've yet to see a lemon from the above.

Toshiba, Compaq, Sony and HP, I wouldn't wish on someone I didn't like. Toshiba's stuff *IS* flimsy and poorly constructed, but Sony sets the mark there.

Compaq and HP just make crap. Their best stuff is maybe as good as IBM or Dell's worst.

 

[time]

... Gateway make reasonably good stuff. All have ups and downs within their product lines, but I've yet to see a lemon from the above.

Hmmm, over here anyway, I would have said that anecdotally Gateway was the most unreliable brand (anyone else from Oz had similar experience?)

Compaq and HP just make crap. Their best stuff is maybe as good as IBM or Dell's worst.

Considering they're often coming out of the same factories, that's an interesting opinion. I guess you could be right, but which aspects in particular are crap?

 

[CougTek]

Compaq and HP just make crap. Their best stuff is maybe as good as IBM or Dell's worst.

This might have been true in the past, but not for the latest Compaq laptops like the 1510 and 900. Both are better made than any Dell I saw (although not superior to the IBM). I agree about your comment when applied to HP stuff though.

 

[Mercutio]

What I've found from Compaq in particular is really, really unreliable equipment. On their laptops, things just break. Maybe poorer QA procedures than Dell/IBM? I don't know.

Gateway, I've found to make a pretty solid product in general. Basically, I haven't had the experience of dealing with "bad" GW laptops, so I'm working with the assumption that their pretty good. I've been in environments with as many as 100 GW notebooks; I think that's a decent enough sample of them to make that judgement.

Gateway in general seems to have a poorer reputation outside the US than within. Other than their sales organization's tendency to overspecify hardware, I've not found myself muttering curses under my breath about them. I have no idea where their bad reputation comes from.

 

[e_dawg]

Time makes a good point here. Most of the big name PC guys do not make their own laptops. They merely market laptops produced (and usually designed) by Taiwanese ODM's like Compal, Quanta, Arima, Acer, Inventec, LG, etc. Apparently, Quanta produces Dell, Gateway, and Apple notebooks, so it seems they are one of the better laptop ODM's.

http://www.wave.co.nz/~css/services/who.htm
http://www.computex.com.tw/twnb2000.asp

 

[Pradeep]

... Gateway make reasonably good stuff. All have ups and downs within their product lines, but I've yet to see a lemon from the above.

Hmmm, over here anyway, I would have said that anecdotally Gateway was the most unreliable brand (anyone else from Oz had similar experience?)

Was being the operative word. I don't have much confidence in a company that simply pulls out of numerous world markets. A frend of mine got a top of the line Gateway laptop a few years back, he was having problems with the IBM hard drive, so they asked him to send it in to be fixed. He took note of the serial number, and was amazed to see that the replacement was only one number off from the original. After some talking to tech support, it was revealed that there was a known problem with the drives, and IBM were shipping two drives for each machine. :eekers:

He also later had to have the mobo replaced as well (under warranty). All in all, I certainly woudn't recommend them.