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Low-end Laptops?
cryingpoet writes: "I remember the good old days, before everyone wanted a cell phone or PDA, back when you could buy a used laptop for $80 (USD). Now all the affordable laptops have hit the recycling bins as raw materials for new screens. To make matters worse, the state of the economy has driven companies to stop upgrading and keep all used laptops "in-house." Most used laptops run twice their cpu clock speed in dollars [$ = MHz * 2($/MHz)]. Auction prices seem to be worse than that of wholeseller. So I come to you, /.ers, in the hopes that there are still some used laptop deals to be had. Is there such a thing as a low-end used laptop anymore, and where?"
That's nirvana - picking up a low-end laptop and running Linux on it. After all, Linux runs find on modest hardware. And, the latest laptops have all this freaky hardware which doesn't seem to want to run with Linux.
The reality is that laptops aren't all that cheap. They have components (namely the battery) which tends to crap out fairly early in life. I've tried to do the same thing. Find a cheap laptop I can use (even if it's still plugged in) to do usefull stuff.
Unfortunately I don't have a good answer for you. The prices for the used stuff aren't great. They have parts that are lighter and tend to break faster. They have slower bus speeds and clock speeds than desktops. They tend to take less ram (used may only accomodate 256 Meg), they have small, expensive drives, and both ram and drives are expensive to upgrade. They have very limitted resolution screens (especially used).
If you need a box, I think you might be better served with used desktops on shear price. If you need the protability - I would look for a less expensive but new laptop. I don't think used saves you much when you look at what you're getting.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I don't know about the real low end, but your $/MHz ratio certainly starts to break down even in the mid-range. I'm typing this on a laptop with a 600MHz CPU, that I just got from uBid for US$700 plus shipping, and I know that I could have gotten an even better $/MHz ratio with a bulkier machine. With that CPU and memory, USB, FireWire etc. this machine will still be viable a lot longer and ultimately provide more practical use per dollar than some low-end machine that's already at the end of its lifespan. Unless you're looking for something that will basically function as an embedded system (in which case you can skip the cost of a screen and get a true embedded SBC) I suggest you consider spending a little more to get a better overall value.
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I just had a brainwave. In the past, friends have come to me with their PC woes (I read slashdot right?) My cousin came to me with her dead laptop. It wouldn't boot up and in the end, she bought a brand new one and the old dead one she just left
;) Of course the warning is that at 3yrs old, don't trust the battery much... but you never know, it might run linux =P
Why was her laptop dead? Well, hard drives in laptops die after 2-3 years typically in my experience. Your joe user see's the laptop die and goes to buy a new one since they are beyond warranty. However, techie you could take the laptop (offer money?) change the HD and voila! You have a cool 3yr old laptop to use as a router or firewall or something
Besides that, I've seen MANY older laptops at used computer stores. But I agree that they cost WAY more than their worth. I've seen computers that wouldn't fetch $5 if they included a good monitor go for more than $200 just because they are laptops.
P.S.
Does anyone else miss the trackballs that old laptops used to have?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I remember the good old days, before everyone wanted a cell phone or PDA, back when you could buy a used laptop for $80 (USD).
Ummm. I don't. I mean, I saw some that were ancient and many didn't work on dutch auction at e-bay. But I don't think there really was an $80 golden age.
What I have seen, though:
Before, your basic decent new TFT laptop started well over $1500. Now it's under $1000. I'm sure used prices will be dropping in kind, and I'm quite happy about it.
Not to mention, for your $80 you can get a PDA that's faster and has more RAM than a high-end laptop from 10 years ago.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
TigerDirect.com has *a lot* of cheap parts and computers, and laptops. Enjoy.
Orange
I'm quite happy with a NEC MobilePro 800 I have. People come up to me when I'm using it and ask what it is and where they can get such a sweet looking sub-notebook. Most of them are sad when I tell them it won't run Microsoft Windows (it has a MIPS R4000 processor).
However, if you're not shy about installing UNIX and compiling programs from source, you definitely want to check it out. All you'll need is a CompactFlash disk (I recommend the IBM 1GB Microdrive), so that you can fit your OS of choice. (I'm using NetBSD, but I hear Linux works, too. NetBSD has a very nice package management system called pkgsrc.)
Don't get me wrong; a souped-up WinCE device is definitely not ideal for everyone. They're not fast and have miniscule memory, but they should be relatively cheap, even new. (There should be many good deals popping up now that Microsoft is discontinuing its MIPS port of WinCE). I know that Alan Computech has the MobilePro 880 for $490 new. I'm sure you can find much better if you look around.
Here's the specs for the MobilePro 880 (which is slightly faster than the 800 which I have):
The skinny: I'm very happy with my "laptop". Everything I want to run is open source, so I'm not tied to the x86 architecture.
Ben