The prices seem decent from various manufacturers, and since it won’t be my primary computer it can be a bit ‘retro’
P III = 800MHz+
128MB
8x DVD
20 Gig harddive
14.1" or better screen
Any recommendations on places to buy from?
better off buying from the manufacturers themselves. Refurb will cost a little more from them than it would from , say, eBay, but your name will be on the account and the warranty will be transferred to your name a lot easier.
For god’s sake, don’t get one from a pawn shop if you think you’ll ever need tech support.
3 words: Warranty, warranty, warranty.
A lot of refurbs are returns from unsatisfied customers. I.e., the customer thought there was something wrong with it. Now, a lot of these folk don’t know where the “any” key is so maybe there really was nothing wrong. If there really was something wrong, many makers are quite inept in tracking it down and fixing it. So the chances that you will get a system with a problem in fairly good. Maybe as high as 10%. (Or even 50% for some makers if other boards are to be believed. I can’t swallow those numbers though.)
Make sure you can return it no questions asked, no restocking fee, if you find any problem at all.
Re: your specs. The CPU speed is nothing to be ashamed about at all. (I have been playing with an old 10MHz laptop recently. It actually boots MS-Windows 3.0 quite fast.) The memory seems paltry though. Is there a real need for such a large hard drive for a notebook? (And in particular, does it make economic sense? 20Gigs desktop is cheap, not so for notebooks.)
ftg, good point about the warranty - do you agree with Max about going direct from manufacturer (Dell or Gateway, my two favourites).
Yeah, the 128 may be a bit light - I guess 256 would be better (particularly if I plan to watch DVDs out in the field from time to time).
Also, I do have a desktop mentality (this notebook will eventually wirelessly network with my desktop), so 20G is what I thought would be baseline. Although anything under 10G would be dicey nowadays, I think.
Got one in my email today, tigerdirect.com, I like them, here is a price comparsion for ya:
DELL Latitude CPXH Pentium III 500MHz Blowout!
- Pentium III 500MHz Processor
- 128MB SDRAM
- HUGE 14.1-Inch TFT Display!
- NIC / MODEM
- Windows 98 OS
- Recertified
Only…$649.99
Also, try your credit card website, mine has great longer warrentees for very reasonable rates. with online
registration of the product too.
I suggest Gateway if you’re getting a PC type computer; checking their refurbs I saw this at the top:
Gateway Solo® 1200
Intel® 800MHz Celeron™ 192MB RAM 12.1" XGA TFT Active Matrix 10GB Hard Drive CD-ROM MS Windows® XP Home Edition $619
They’re teriffic about customer sat also; Dell tends to be much less friendly about broken bits of the computer. Dell has good tech support, from what I’ve heard, but they won’t support a computer after you install a new BIOS, ferchrissakes.
Of course, I think you should buy an Apple, but that’s just li’l ol’ me. 
I suggest Gateway if you’re getting a PC type computer; checking their refurbs I saw this at the top:
Gateway Solo® 1200
Intel® 800MHz Celeron™ 192MB RAM 12.1" XGA TFT Active Matrix 10GB Hard Drive CD-ROM MS Windows® XP Home Edition $619
They’re teriffic about customer sat also; Dell tends to be much less friendly about broken bits of the computer. Dell has good tech support, from what I’ve heard, but they won’t support a computer after you install a new BIOS, ferchrissakes.
Of course, I think you should buy an Apple, but that’s just li’l ol’ me.
I suggest Gateway if you’re getting a PC type computer; checking their refurbs I saw this at the top:
Gateway Solo® 1200
Intel® 800MHz Celeron™ 192MB RAM 12.1" XGA TFT Active Matrix 10GB Hard Drive CD-ROM MS Windows® XP Home Edition $619
They’re teriffic about customer sat also; Dell tends to be much less friendly about broken bits of the computer. Dell has good tech support, from what I’ve heard, but they won’t support a computer after you install a new BIOS, ferchrissakes.
Of course, I think you should buy an Apple, but that’s just li’l ol’ me.
I suggest Gateway if you’re getting a PC type computer; checking their refurbs I saw this at the top:
Gateway Solo® 1200
Intel® 800MHz Celeron™ 192MB RAM 12.1" XGA TFT Active Matrix 10GB Hard Drive CD-ROM MS Windows® XP Home Edition $619
They’re teriffic about customer sat also; Dell tends to be much less friendly about broken bits of the computer. Dell has good tech support, from what I’ve heard, but they won’t support a computer after you install a new BIOS, ferchrissakes.
Of course, I think you should buy an Apple, but that’s just li’l ol’ me.
“Re-manufactured” means different things to different people and vendors use the term loosely. OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer.
The classic “re-manufactured” units are typically either OEM factory serviced units that had some problem corrected and are in newish condition or returns from retail stores to the factory that essentially had nothing wrong with them, and are re-boxed for sale through the OEM ar a re-seller. Either of these two classes are typically good (but not great) deals if they come with a OEM factory warranty.
Non-OEM “Re-furbished” (sometimes called re-manufactured) units are a whole 'nother animal and can mean anything from non- OEM “re-manufacturing or servicing” to a wipe down with a wet rag.
In the end it really depends on the vendor, the deal and the warranty. I can stack discounts and bargain with local retail stores to get new, name brand notebooks with full warranties for less than a thousand dollars in many cases. As an example using several stacked discounts I bought a Toshiba Satellite 1005-S157 unit with better overall specs than those listed in your OP, new in the box for $ 800 + tax after discounts and that was over 6 months ago.
Given the relatively small differential between new and “re-manufactured”, unless it’s a fabulous deal I would try to wrangle my best deal on a new unit.
As an example of a basic “OK” discount this new unit is only
$ 1,000 after discounts.
.
Adamant as athene seems to be about that Dell/BIOS thing :), I can assure you that’s incorrect. Dell suggests you upgrade your BIOS; that’s why they have them on the website. Dell will NOT, on the other had, support an o/s that was not sold with the computer. Makes sense, since the software publisher will handle the support on 3rd party materials.
d’oh…stupid computer kept giving me connection errors…
That’s closer to what I was trying to say. It seemed a bit odd to me; it was a complaint my father’d had – he was trying to upgrade a computer to XP and he called Dell. Dell said “your BIOS won’t handle it.” Dad said he would upgrade it; Dell said “fine but we won’t support it.”
That’s when Dad started building his own desktops.
I used to repair Dells for a living, back in college – specifically Dell laptops. We updated the BIOS all the time; really confused me when I heard Dad’s news.
What dell wont support is the OS if its upgraded… they WONT stop supporting ANY of the hardware… Drivers included. Fact of the matter is, the OS really isnt supported for free after the first 30 days anyway officially. Though reloads and registry restores are ALWAYS done when required anyway. So in reality, your not losing much or anything.
I need to clearify that. Reloads and registry restores are always done when needed FOR THE ORIGINAL OS even after 30 days. NOT for an upgraded OS.