I’ll consider it.
The Ebay lapto has Win 11 installed.
There’s no backup media with it.
I’d probably have to purchase a hard drive and OEM version of Windows from New Egg. Maybe the home version would save me $$.
btw, you can google a processor for the date
Intel Core i7-1165G7
was released on September 2, 2020
It’s 5 years old. 6 this coming Sept
But much better than the i5 laptop that I first linked.
It probably wouldn’t matter for Python programming. Pro doesn’t add any programming-specific features, just a bunch of IT controls, group policy editor, some virtualization, etc.: Windows 11 Pro vs Home: What's the difference? | Tom's Guide
You can also just pay to upgrade Home to Pro later on if you ever need to. Don’t let that alone drive a laptop purchasing decision.
It seems fine? It’s a fair price for a used machine with fair specs. But I don’t really know what you’re looking for overall. Like, that’s not a bad machine by any means, but it’s also not a particularly outstanding deal. I don’t know if you have a particular budget or timeline in mind, or are just window shopping.
This is one of those situations where undoubtedly there is a better deal out there somewhere if you care to dig for it or wait for a sale, but it’s also easy to get overwhelmed by decision fatigue.
I get that, and it’s a great way to get a good computer for less money. I’ve bought and sold many used/refurbished laptops.
But in your case, this whole thing just kinda quickly snowballed from an initial discussion about backups and hard drives, so I’m not too sure what you’re looking for, at what budget and timeline 
It’s fine; no need to go out and buy another license. The activation is probably tied to the hardware anyway. If you need backup media, just make one yourself. But Windows Reset can redownload & reinstall Windows from the internet anyway, and it should just automatically reactivate.
Laptops with Home are typically a tiny bit cheaper — not by much. Windows is a lot cheaper to OEMs than it is for you at retail. But if you’re shopping used small-business laptops like Latitudes, they would probably have Pro included anyway.
So to save money, you plan to purchase a used ex-corporate Windows 11 notebook computer. But then you plan to buy a hard drive and OEM version of Windows. Why?
I really need 1 TB storage.
I don’t want to find myself running out of space again in 2 years.
All the refurbished Dells that I found listed were 512 GB drives. That seems to be standard.
I wouldn’t buy Windows unless forced too. I’m not sure what will happen if I clone the smaller drive with Win 11 and move it to a 1 TB.
It might trigger the license validation?
A few years ago, it was required to buy a hard drive and the OEM Windows.
That satisfied Microsoft requirements to install OEM Windows on New Hardware.
Is that still true?
The retail version of Windows is high $
You might consider looking at the Dell used computer listings. I don’t know what it is in the US but in Canada it’s part of Dell Financial, and they list lots of nice stuff that is coming off corporate leases. My current Dell Optiplex desktop is a former corporate lease and is the best, most solid computer I’ve ever owned.
I’ve bought one desktop and two laptops from their off-lease program, and all have been fine, but be aware that when I bought them – and probably still today – they come with generic vanilla operating systems that are not configured for the specific machine, so you have to identify and download the right drivers to get full functionality, and in many cases you have to install the drivers in a specified order. So it definitely wasn’t a case of “just turn it on, and everything works”.
Why don’t you try it first? It’ll probably be fine, and if not, you can always try reactivating it: Reactivating Windows after a hardware change - Microsoft Support. Apparently it helps if you associate the license to your Microsoft account first (as in booting up the computer and logging in, before cloning it to a new drive).
Buying a whole Windows license just to upgrade a drive should be a last resort, not the first option…
Two different things.
That’s a loophole that some sellers use in order to sell you a new OEM copy of Windows without a whole computer.
For activation/reactivation purposes, though, Windows has some sort of magical internal “how much hardware has changed” threshold that it uses to calculate whether a reactivation is required. Changing a drive alone shouldn’t be enough to trigger it; usually it takes at least a motherboard change.
Also, if data storage is your main concern here, have you thought about just getting an external SSD? That way your computer processing needs (how fast it is) isn’t tied to how much space you need (your accumulation of files).
This came as a surprise to me too.
I thought my storage was adequate two months ago.
Since then I installed Python IDE, and some other software. I think the cumulative Jan 2026 Win 10 update ate a lot of space.
I was not happy to see only 30 gb remaining on my 128 gb drive.
My next thought was that it’s time to buy a bigger drive. But, why spend over $200 on an old Win 10 box that can’t be upgraded to Win 11?
That then leads to a buying another used laptop. @Reply warned me against an obsolete i5 processor.
The Dell’s with i5 are $250 and i7 $350.
It’s worth the extra $ to get a more recent processor.
I want to be certain this time that I have enough storage space for the next 3 years.
1 TB drive then.
Man, that Reply guy, always unnecessarily complicating things… 
Anyway, I wouldn’t say the difference between an i5 and i7 is necessarily worth it, but a difference between several generations might be — the i7 you mentioned happens to be 3 generations newer. But there are also i5s of that generation, e.g. this one from the same seller can be configured with an i5th 10th or 11th gen, a 1 TB SSD, 16 GB RAM, and either Windows 11 Home or Pro. Might save you some hassle.
But I’d also reiterate that if you frequently like to upgrade with used components, a desktop might be a better long-term option here. Get a good-enough desktop, add a big SSD, then someday you can splurge on a nice monitor + speakers, etc., and keep those even if you upgrade the drives, CPU, motherboard, etc. piecemeal. With a laptop, half the money you spend on it ends up buying a crappy screen, crappy keyboard, etc. all over again.
I appreciate all the advice @Reply
The water gets deep fast with hardware upgrades. There’s lots to consider and learn.
I liked my current laptop and would have upgraded the HD.
But, the new Windows 10 support expiration at the end of 2026 will get here quickly.
I don’t want my exposed butt on the Internet in 2027 without any Windows updates.
Hackers will quickly exploit every weakness in Win 10.
Yeah, it’s a lot, isn’t it? It can totally be a rabbit hole…
If I were in your shoes, knowing what (little) I know based on what you’ve said so far (you like music, need more space, want to learn Python, prefer to buy used, don’t really need an upgrade right now but would consider it)… what about this:
There’s no particular rush to do any of this; no need to preemptively complicate your life, no matter what that guy Reply says 
Ok.
btw, to clarify.
I need to look at the ix processor number and the generation?
Google gives a exact version date
For Intel Core i7-1165G7 as
Release date Q3/2020
That’s helpful to know.
Dell will give a build date from the serial number.
I built and sold pc’s until 2012. I bought the motherboards, cpu,memory and tower cases from Newegg.
The power supply was my breaking point. They kept changing the damn things.
I carefully spec’d a motherboard and power supply for my last client. The motherboard had one required power tap that my $100 power supply didn’t support. I had to return it to Newegg and buy a power supply with all the correct octopus power leads.
I was burned out trying to keep up with cpu changes and the type of memory that was required for compatibility. I built pc’s for clients from 1993 to 2012 and had seen every new CPU and type of memory as it came out.My first build used a Intel 486 and then I built a bunch of Pentiums.
You remember the first 486? It was really a 386 pretending. There was an extra coprocessor chip that was required to give it the balls of a real 486.
The power supply changes were the last straw for me.
Just like 1980 isn’t 20 years, ago, we’re way past that…
The i3/5/7/9 series went up to the 14th generation, and Intel just released the third generation of their new line that is the successor to the i3/5/7/9 CPUs.
My main laptop is still a 10th generation i7, and it’s fine. I don’t really have plans to upgrade, particularly with component prices being what they are. For the right price, a used 10th generation (or newer) Intel would be a good computer.
The main thing necessary when buying used computers is to do some sanity checking into what the same budget could get you new. An off lease office computer from Dell is likely to be better than an equivalently priced bargain basement new computer.
As to the whole CPU line versus generation thing, it can get complicated. My laptop’s i7-10th gen CPU was faster at CPU things than an i3-11th gen desktop I was using for awhile. For the builtin graphics, the 11th gen chip was faster, though. None of the integrated graphics are as fast as the Nvidia discrete GPU in my laptop. That mobile Nvidia GPU is not quite as fast as a 10 year old desktop Nvidia GPU.
It’s complicated… and they recently changed it too (edit: and see echoreply’s post). See here for an explanation, but basically it’s something like 3/5/7/9 for the “tier” within a generation, followed by the generation, and the last letter is its family (like U is for low-power laptop chips, H for desktop-grade but used in a laptop, K for overclock-friendly, etc.). That’s just Intel; AMD uses their own scheme.
Personally I just skip all that and head to the benchmarks, like you did. Just type in “Intel blahblah vs Intel blahblah” and you’ll usually find a comparison somewhere, with benchmark numbers that are good enough to give you a rough idea of how much faster something is, or isn’t.
It’s complicated because a desktop CPU will usually be quite a bit faster than a laptop CPU a few generations ahead (due to their different levels of electricity and heat allowed). Or within mobile CPUs, some generations the AMDs are faster, other generations the Intels are faster, and some generations are bigger leaps than others.
All in all, if two CPUs are close, I wouldn’t even worry about it — probably not big enough of a difference to tell. It’s when you get into 2x to 3x performance differences (usually takes about a decade) where it might actually start to matter in everyday use.
Understood completely. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass to keep up with. I stopped for 10-15 years too and just recently got back into it in order to try some PC games I’d missed out on. Ended up just buying a prebuilt from Costco because it was cheap and simple.
BTW, if you’ve never considered Macs… their laptops are miles ahead of PC laptops right now. For the first time in my life, Microsoft is finally considering doing something about it with the Snapdragon ARM PC chips and Windows for Arm. That might be another reason to wait — to see if Arm on Windows actually takes off enough to supersede the current x86 machines. That change will be far bigger and more meaningful than the change from 10 to 11 (which is really just a money-grab). It took Apple Silicon to really get Intel and AMD off their asses, and Qualcomm interested in desktop computers again. Before that, there was like a decade of stagnation.
I remember now.
The 286 and 386 had a socket for a math coprocessor chip aka fpu.
The earliest 486sx had its fpu disabled
(floating-point unit)
The 486dx was 
Most builders didn’t include the Dx unless the client requested it.
Personally, I would opt to buy a brand-new computer, with any modifications (like the one-terabyte drive) I want, rather than buying something several years old and then replacing the storage.
Coincidentally I know the perfect guy to call for a new PC.
Nah, I’ve bugged this guy enough. He’s tapped out.
Calling
With laptops this can get very complicated when on a budget. A used $500 laptop might have a very good screen, a metal frame or body, and be generally well built, because when new it was $2000. A new $500 computer will be faster, possibly with more RAM and storage, but will be all plastic, have a lower quality screen, and will generally feel like a cheap computer.
Lots of people think their laptop that was $2000 five years ago is now worth $1500, so it requires knowing what you’re looking at if you want to enter the used market.
The Apple Silicon processors are really nice. Right now I’m using my “walking around laptop” which is a Mac Air M2. At full throttle the M2 benchmarks faster than my main laptop’s i7-10750H, and the M2 is much more power efficient. That isn’t the interesting part, though. If I run the M2 in low power mode, I get probably 80% of the performance of the i7 with 4-5 times the battery life.
I can truly treat the M2 like my phone. I can use it unplugged “walking around” during the day, and then just plug it in at night.
Here’s an opportunity for me to give back.
Sharing tech info should be a two-way street.
I suggest bookmarking for when you need it.
Accessing bios from Windows is new too me.