I need a new to me laptop - Page 1

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - I need a new to me laptop

Posted: 11/24/2014 3:47:50 PM EDT

My old 2008 Sony Vaio with Vista (yeah, you read that right

) is beginning to show signs of fatigue. I need a replacement that can handle Office, occasional AutoCAD, and general internetting and music playing, for $250 or less. TigerDirect has a bunch of off-lease laptops with 64-bit Win 7 Pro (which is what I use at work) for $210-$220, any reason to avoid these? What about refurbished units? Any other ideas? I'm not really interested in chromebooks. Ideally I'd buy something fancy and brand new, but that's just not in the picture.

Posted: 11/24/2014 3:54:16 PM EDT

[#1]

Lenovo outlet?

Posted: 11/24/2014 3:59:35 PM EDT

[#2]

Buy a new solid state drive for under a hundred bucks install vista fresh or buy a new OS and you will have a laptop that will outperform anything comparable to a $250 laptop.
I bought this Samsung 128 GB SSD did a fresh windows install and my laptop (4 year old HP) is faster than my wife's brand new Toshiba.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:07:43 PM EDT

[#3]

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Quoted:
Buy a new solid state drive for under a hundred bucks install vista fresh or buy a new OS and you will have a laptop that will outperform anything comparable to a $250 laptop.
I bought this Samsung 128 GB SSD did a fresh windows install and my laptop (4 year old HP) is faster than my wife's brand new Toshiba.

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If I did something like this, what else would I have to update/upgrade for it to not be hampered by hardware limitations?

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:15:05 PM EDT

[#4]

Max out the RAM. Look on ebay for used RAM since "new" stuff is gonna be pricey. That age of laptop will probably have a socketed CPU. I upgraded the CPU in my Acer from a single core 1.67ghz Celeron to a Dual Core 2ghz Pentium for about $25. Big difference there. Again, used, on ebay, is where I got everything. Maxed it out with 3GB of RAM (for some reason, it choked on 4 at the bios) and installed a dual layer dvd burner. I did a 7200 rpm drive at the time, SSD's were way too expensive, but yea, go the SSD route, you can usually find a 250GB one on Newegg (Samsung) for about $120-130, sometimes a 500gb for $200'ish.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:20:35 PM EDT

[#5]

One of the reasons I'm trying to do this now is because I recently had a "Operating System not detected" incident, where I think I may have whacked it getting into or out of the car and jostled the hard drive. I closed it up and gave it a night's rest and it worked fine the next day, but I'm considering that fair warning that something needs to change. If I did go the rebuild it myself route, what would I look for inside the case to make sure I didn't do any damage that would make replacing the hard drive a waste of time? Just obvious stuff like cracks? The screen has a few permanent vertical lines in it, too. I don't think any of this would fix that.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:25:19 PM EDT

[#6]

http://www.amazon.com/15-6-Inch-Intel-Celeron-Laptop-500GB/dp/B00L49X8E6/ref=zg_bs_565108_1

Best selling laptop on Amazon right now. Looks pretty nice for 250.

Quoted:
One of the reasons I'm trying to do this now is because I recently had a "Operating System not detected" incident, where I think I may have whacked it getting into or out of the car and jostled the hard drive. I closed it up and gave it a night's rest and it worked fine the next day, but I'm considering that fair warning that something needs to change. If I did go the rebuild it myself route, what would I look for inside the case to make sure I didn't do any damage that would make replacing the hard drive a waste of time? Just obvious stuff like cracks? The screen has a few permanent vertical lines in it, too. I don't think any of this would fix that.

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HDD replacement probably isn't worth it for that old of computer. $50 for a new hard drive and 3-4 hours of time for installation and Windows install.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:25:22 PM EDT

[#7]

My reply was in response to a new laptop for around $250. Not much else hardware wise that is available to upgrade in a laptop except the ram as was explained in the previous post. That being said if the SSD doesn't fix your laptop and speed it up (which it will, 10 times better than RAM) you can always put it in your new $250 laptop which definitely will not have one. My laptop before the SSD used to take up to 2 min to start up now it loads windows in about 10 sec.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:27:14 PM EDT

[#8]

Hell even best buy has brand new Pentium's with gb ram and 500gb hard drives for like 229 bucks Look for Asus or Lenovo

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:47:21 PM EDT

[#9]

Newegg refurbished thinkpad, then maybe add some RAM. A refurbished thinkpad is many times higher quality than the sub $300 new laptops.

IMHO this is the best deal they have right now, though it is $309 shipped.

http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-34-317-964

Are you talking 2D, older versions of Autocad? I have Inventor 2013 on a refurbished t410, and I wouldn't want to draw with it for a living. 2D Autocad 2008 runs like lighting.

Posted: 11/24/2014 4:58:42 PM EDT

[#10]

Quote History

Quoted:
My reply was in response to a new laptop for around $250. Not much else hardware wise that is available to upgrade in a laptop except the ram as was explained in the previous post. That being said if the SSD doesn't fix your laptop and speed it up (which it will, 10 times better than RAM) you can always put it in your new $250 laptop which definitely will not have one. My laptop before the SSD used to take up to 2 min to start up now it loads windows in about 10 sec.

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I am intrigued by this idea, but admit that I don't know enough about this stuff to feel comfortable relying on my abilities to get a computer up and running satisfactorily at this point. Maybe I could do an SSD upgrade down the road but right now I think I'll stick with buying a whole (although likely inferior) laptop. This one looks pretty good, as long as you guys don't see it being off-lease as a deal breaker.

Posted: 11/24/2014 5:01:45 PM EDT

[#11]

Quote History

Quoted:
Are you talking 2D, older versions of Autocad? I have Inventor 2013 on a refurbished t410, and I wouldn't want to draw with it for a living. 2D Autocad 2008 runs like lighting.

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I'm going to school part time for mechanical engineering and I have the student version of Autocad 2012 on my current laptop. It runs it well enough for student stuff, but I wouldn't try anything serious with it (I haven't tried running Inventor on it). I'm not likely to take any more cad classes at this point, so it would mostly be supplemental to whatever engineering classes I happen to be taking in the next couple of years.

Posted: 11/24/2014 6:00:39 PM EDT

[#12]

Quote History

Quoted:

I'm going to school part time for mechanical engineering and I have the student version of Autocad 2012 on my current laptop. It runs it well enough for student stuff, but I wouldn't try anything serious with it (I haven't tried running Inventor on it). I'm not likely to take any more cad classes at this point, so it would mostly be supplemental to whatever engineering classes I happen to be taking in the next couple of years.

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Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
Are you talking 2D, older versions of Autocad? I have Inventor 2013 on a refurbished t410, and I wouldn't want to draw with it for a living. 2D Autocad 2008 runs like lighting.

I'm going to school part time for mechanical engineering and I have the student version of Autocad 2012 on my current laptop. It runs it well enough for student stuff, but I wouldn't try anything serious with it (I haven't tried running Inventor on it). I'm not likely to take any more cad classes at this point, so it would mostly be supplemental to whatever engineering classes I happen to be taking in the next couple of years.

I can use Autocad 2013 on my refurbished T410 without issues. I believe that we've bought 12 of them here at work this year, and only got one bad one (which we returned without hassel). I would buy through newegg over TigerDirect, but that's just me.

My personal T410 does have an added 4GB ram card for 8 total, and to supplement the smallish 128gb SSD, I have a 500gb regular hard drive (actually off of my previous laptop) in a bay adaptor since I hardly ever use CDs/DVDs.

Posted: 11/24/2014 6:40:54 PM EDT

[#13]

Go over to SlickDeals and compare deals. Here's a list of laptop deals.

http://slickdeals.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?&tagid=34&f=9

This one will be $399 on Thursday.

- 15.6-inch HD touchscreen

- Intel Core i5-4210U

- 8GB memory/1TB HDD

- Up to 12 hours battery life

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Dell-Inspiron-15-i15547-5033sLV-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.308795000

Posted: 12/12/2014 5:09:53 PM EDT

[#14]

Quote History

Quoted:
Newegg refurbished thinkpad, then maybe add some RAM. A refurbished thinkpad is many times higher quality than the sub $300 new laptops.

IMHO this is the best deal they have right now, though it is $309 shipped.

http://www.neweggbusiness.com/product/product.aspx?item=9b-34-317-964

Are you talking 2D, older versions of Autocad? I have Inventor 2013 on a refurbished t410, and I wouldn't want to draw with it for a living. 2D Autocad 2008 runs like lighting.

View Quote

Quick update: I got a refurbished t410 with a 2.4gh i5, 4gb RAM, 250gb hdd, Win7Prox64, and Office07 Pro, for $235 shipped through newegg. The only thing that looks "used" about it is the touch pad is a little worn in the middle. So far so good.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - I need a new to me laptop

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