Good place to buy a "refurbished" (and warrantied) laptop?

Heretic Apostate · Jan 4, 2005

My computer, which I originally bought as a stopgap after my Win-ME computer died (curse Bill Gates!), isn't doing so well. I plan on keeping it as my primary internet (and iTunes, and CD burning, and other stuff...) computer, but I need something better if I want to run games. And I can't justify paying around $2000 to buy a computer just for playing games...

So does anyone know where I can find a decent gamer-friendly laptop? I don't buy cutting-edge games (I think my most recent purchases were Civ3: Conquests and MOO3; might buy Zoo Tycoon 2 and Sims 2, after they've gone through a patch or two), so something that is mildly obsolete should do well for me (I hope...).

Help would be appreciated!

LightPhoenix · Jan 4, 2005

I have no answers for you HA, sorry.

In fact, I'm very much interested in this as well. However, I'm not looking for a gaming platform... that's why I built my computer.

Rather, if I'm gonna be doing grad school, a laptop is highly recommended for use in the lab. It wouldn't need to be as much of a powerhouse, but I'd like it to be fairly speedy, as I'll be crunching a lot of numbers in Excel and such. Of course, I wouldn't be adverse to a game of Civ 3 while tests were running...

Heretic Apostate · Jan 4, 2005

Yeah, I would be using it to run:

Windows XP Pro
Microsoft Office Pro 2000
Microsoft Office Pro XP (yeah, both of them; I have full versions of each--legal ones, even

)
Acrobat Reader (I'm big into buying PDFs of old TSR/WOTC stuff)

As for fun stuff:
Civ 3 (and Conquest)
Medieval: Total War (gotta get around to buying the Vikings expansion)
Zoo Tycoon (and DD and MM)
Civ 2 (and expansions)
Hoyle's Casino, Card Games, and Board Games
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire
Majesty & the Northern expansion

etc etc etc. Less emphasis on multimedia (since I don't plan on wearing earplugs or attaching speakers), and more emphasis on just being able to play when and where I darn well please. And all without spending $2000, since while I like the games, but they're NOT worth $2000 to me.

LathanM · Jan 5, 2005

Check www.tigerdirect.com They normally have laptops starting at $500. I picked up a couple of off lease Thinkpads for $509. They are 900Mhz P3s but they had faster ones for a little more.

Aristotle · Jan 7, 2005

The above link might be your best bet. Your other option is just to keep an eye out for decent sales at the various manufacturer sites. I purchased a Dell two days ago (should be here in two weeks). It isn't the latest and greatest thing on the block, but I'm happy with the purchase. 1.5G Celeron, 512mb memory, and a 64mb Go5200 video card along with some other low-end system goodies for under a grand (after tax and shipping).

The trick at the Dell site is to build the same system on both the home and home office side of the site and the small business side. The computers are identical, but the different groups within the company run different promotions. Almost all of the upgrades I had to pay extra for on the home side came as free upgrades on the business side. I got the same computer for like three hundred dollars less that way.

reveal · Jan 7, 2005

You also may want to try www.overstock.com. They sell the stock that company's don't keep because they have too much of it. They usually have some pretty good ones.

Rodrigo Istalindir · Jan 9, 2005

IBM has an E-bay store where they sell last-months models and refurbs with warranties. I've gotten my last two Thinkpads that way, and never had a problem.

Heretic Apostate · Jan 9, 2005

What's IBM's seller ID?

The problem I've been having with overstock.com is that they don't list the details of the computers. Given we're dealing with laptops here, there is limited upgradeability and probably not much room for changing stuff in and out. I've puttered along with a computer with good stats, but lousy performance, for going on two years now, and I don't want to be stuck in the same situation again, but this time down $1200+ (instead of the $800 I spent to buy and upgrade this P.O.S.).

On a related note, how does one set up a wireless network? I'm considering getting wireless networking for the laptop (maybe... I might just download stuff to the external hard drive I have; that's another 80GB available there), and haven't a clue what's involved in wireless networking.