OT--slightly anyway, what gives with used laptops

Charlie,

I'd vote against the PDA, primarily because the size of the screen isn't that much bigger than your camera's LCD display.

A good laptop will afford you lots of download capabilities, not to mention the ability to edit as needed.

Besides - a high end PDA puts you at $450-500 anyway...

Rick

Reply to
Rick Chamberlain
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Rich Chamberlain responds:

Yeah, I agree. I did a quick check after Steve's post, and discovered there doesn't seem to be much there, really, that would be helpful. I don't NEED to do on-screen editing on-site, but it would be nice if possible; a 20 gig hard drive is probably bottom end for a couple day's shooting, what with other things that are going to be on there, and USB is essential...I've got an extra

120 gig hard drive that uses USB 2. I can dump most of what's on that and stay out for a month!

Too, the laptop is handy when I'm out of the office but need to meet deadlines on articles, something I've avoided to date.

Charlie Self "I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents." Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Charlie Self

Posted a suggestion for you at A.B.P.W. Look for "OT- Portable computer idea for CS"

Reply to
mp

Don't think too long about the PDA. Resolution isn't there. Wife keeps her photo gallery of grandkids and such on hers, but it's nothing like throwing the camera memory into the PCMCIA slot, then having 1024x768 and Photoshop to play with.

Those "return from lease" computers are pretty common, and some are up-to-date enough. Got a ThinkPad Celeron for $360 from a local college kid which takes care of photo business, internet browsing, and lesson planning. Check with a local laptop university for December graduations, they offer to the holders (who have already paid for them) at an attractive price, but not all take advantage of it. Daughter bought an $899 new Dell, which works not one bit faster at common tasks than mine.

Reply to
George

I don't know if these meet your needs, but they're half built. Pop in a hard drive, ram, (and on some a CPU) and you're good to go.

Reply to
mp

Charlie ...

eBay generally has hundreds (at least) of used laptops, some over-priced but many pretty reasonable. Last year I needed a cheap laptop for off-site audio recording. I found a used NEC laptop with a 6.4 GIG HD, 10+ inch display, CD drive and USB port. It's only a 233MHz Pentium II but it cost me only $233 and it serves my purposes just fine. I have also used it to transfer and view pictures from my digital camera, although that is not why I originally bought it. Here's the search parameter I used:

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doing a cursory scan I see that as I was typing this, there was an IBM Thinkpad with a 12.1 inch TFT display and a DVD drive that just went for $299 and a working Toshiba Tecra with 12" screen that just sold for $41. I'm sure you can find something sufficiently cheap.

Lee

Reply to
Lee Gordon

Sorry. I dropped ABPW long ago because AOL tends to drop 85% of the pix.

Charlie Self "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Charlie Self

Or close to sufficiently cheap. I'll check it out, and thanks.

Charlie Self "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Charlie Self

Yeah. Lots of stuff using Win98, too, but I'm not sure that can be made to support USB. I think I tossed my ME CD a week or two ago. Worst OS I ever tried, including Mac OS 8.

Wish I had time this afternoon to pop into town and see what they've got there. I've got some stuff that might actually make a decent one-to-one swap for a $600 or $800 laptop.

Charlie Self "Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened." Sir Winston Churchill

Reply to
Charlie Self

I'll second ebay... I managed to pick up a PIII-400 4.3 gig dell latitude for < $300. I already had an identical system (except hd = 20gig) and wanted a backup. ;)

I decided to install netbsd on it and it's become my primary machine.

I just wish i could get my card reader to read my CF cards. :(

Good luck charlie!

Reply to
Philip Lewis

Charlie, just my 2 cents but Dell currently has an entry level laptop for $719. Add the support and it will last you some time. You want to use this thing for video capture from your camera and an older PII may do that now but it will be painfull and won't support you for very long. It's like buying any other tool. If you want to save a few bucks at minimum go with a PIII 800+ mhz system. Memory is pretty cheap to add to these guys these days. You will at least get a few years out of that and should be able to find it for around $400.

Reply to
John

Everyone wants a laptop. I have computers that I can't even give away but everyone wants to know when I'm getting a new laptop, there is a wait list to last longer than my lifetime of people wanting me old ones.

Be very careful of the Dell 1150 (and maybe others) it has a desktop cpu. My wife bought one and it runs _HOT_. Just sitting on a desk with the screen blank the cpu fan will turn on off every few minutes. Pick up the machine and both cpu fans crank up to full speed shopvac sound level. Its a 2.4GHz machine and with the software load from Dell it ran slower than my

1GHz latitude. I reloaded XP clean on it and its better but still not as fast as it should be. Some of these new cheap laptops are really a rip off, they throw in a fast cpu and huge screen so you have to have a big battery and loose the benefit of portability, but they give it a slow hard disk, slow system bus, slow memory, etc so you loose the benefit of the fast cpu and bug screen. If you want a decent one look for a Latitude, sign in the small business store and if they ask what the business is your an "independent contractor". You will pay the same price buy won't get all the "free" software included so instead you get a better quality system. The computer makers work the same as tool makers, I paid the same for my crapsman router as my PC router, but I got a bunch of accessories with the crapsman and have to buy all the accessories for my PC. But the PC will do a much better job and outlast the crapsman which I wore out in a short time.
Reply to
Eugene

Then perhaps you may want to wait a bit. The same money six months down the road will buy you a lot more computer than you'll get today plus there will be a lot more used equipment on the market right after Christmas.

Reply to
mp

On 07 Sep 2004 17:15:18 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@aol.comnotforme (Charlie Self) calmly ranted:

My dad wrote his (one, not 45 like you) book on a Kaypro II. They were definitely not "laptop" models.

.-. Better Living Through Denial ---

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Wondrous Website Design

Reply to
Larry Jaques

The were called "luggables" if memory serves. j4

Reply to
jo4hn

Shazzamm!

I went away for a couple of weeks and all kinds of cool stuff started happening.

You're threatened with a suit from an anonymous asshole - who really isn't all that anonymous.

Peoples is telling you to buy a PDA to view photos with - as though a three inch screen is demonstrably better than a two inch screen.

Some peoples is encouraging you to buy a used laptop for the same money as a new laptop - because it was better in it's day.

Golly - I do love the Wreck.

I'd go for that low end Dell and add in a few treats.

Pay for the DVD burner, which is cheap as shit if'n you buy it up front and allows you to burn 4.5 gb worth of stuff. Get that extra memory when Dell is running the special on it. Otherwise, buy the aftermarket. It's all about dollars per byte.

Akshully, if'n it were me, I'd position myself to eliminate the desktop and spend about two grand on the laptop. Keep the screen you have, if'n it can be color corrected. Get yaself a nice port replicator and you can keep using the keyboard that you like and the mouse that you like - and you will have two screens to work on - which can be a great help. The existing desktop will make a nice storage device - IDE drives are cheap as dirt right now.

I work with two screens and would never go back.

There is one word of counsel that I would give to you -

"Bidness"

Do not buy on the Home/Home Office side of the Dell website. If you do, you will be relegated to non-english-speaking-peoples as your resource for customer service/tech support.

The "Bidness" side of the Dell website will kick you right into the section where you will deal with Americans who don't speak English - you will be better off - because you will be used to that.

I know, it's a slippery slope - you have a target figure for dollars to be spent - get over it. It is way past time that everyone switched to laptops as their main computer - if you don't bite the bullet now - you will bite it bigtime in the future.

I think that you could make a good argument for giving your current desktop to a deserving family member - thus giving them somewhat current technology whilst propelling yaself into both currency and beyond.

A couple of caveats - if you buy 512mb ram, make sure it is all on one chip - it will cost you more but your upgrade path will be better (same goes for 1gb - I wouldn't buy a box with less than a two gb potential).

Second - get a video card that is twice as nice as the best that you could forsee needing (DAMHIKT).

Thirdly (I lied) get a bigass hard drive and make it spin at 7200 - you won't regret it.

I bought most of the above from Dell for $1750.00 American and I like it a lot.

YMMV.

yippeee!

Regards, Tom.

Thomas J.Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.) tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet (real email)

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Reply to
Tom Watson

Charlie,

I would also suggest EBay. A few months ago I purchased a Thinkpad PIII, 450 Mhz, 20GB HD and 512 MB RAM, with OS, carrying bag, Ethernet card, etc. for under $400. Looking in Ebay history, the same computer has sold for as low as $350 on occasion.

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Reply to
Wally Goffeney

WalMart has recently started selling laptops. I haven't looked at them but the price sounds good. See:

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Novak Buffalo, NY - USA (Remove "SPAM" from email address to reply)

Reply to
Nova

Nah, it's Micro$oft's new OS just for carpenters & woodworkers ... MS Doors :-p

Reply to
Marc Hudson

The hard part's finding a working or repairable with reasonable effort machine with lights and switches on the front panel for a reasonable price.

Reply to
J. Clarke

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