I’m looking for a laptop to take with me on trips. I really only need to do a handful of things, so my requirements are minimal. I want:
Internet access, both wireless and through a cable
MS Word
a USB port
a level of comfort in the machine’s reliability
…and that’s pretty much it. Having Excel an Powerpoint would be nice, but not necessary. An international voltage adaptor (120/220) would be nice, but not necessary. Light weight would be nice, but not necessary.
I’m not necessarily averse to paying for a good new machine, but it seems kind of a waste to pay a lot for something that I use only occasionally. So. Should I consider a remanufactured laptop? If so, from where? A used one on eBay? If so, what should I look for? Or would a new one (that presumably will last longer) be a better value in the long run? Other options?
You can buy decent new powerful and full featured notebooks w/ warranty for $ 450 after rebate. In my experience used notebooks are never worth the risk unless the price is dirt cheap. (see Circuit City & Best Buy websites for Memorial Day specials)
In addition to the risk that used notebooks may have had rough lives, with notebooks the batteries start to deteriorate the day they leave the factory, and replacement of older batteries is often expensive and problematic.
I would never buy a used laptop, or one returned from a lease. But “B-Stock” merchandise are products that were shipped and sold but were DOA out of the box. They are shipped back to the manufacturer, repaired and boxed again in like-new condition. But they cannot be sold as new. I’ve gotten a number of clients, friends and relatives into B-Stock HP and Compaq laptops from Microcenter and have had a 100% success rate. In some ways they are more reliable because they have been more extensively tested than the new products - as T.S. Garp said “It’s pre-disastered!” They have always been at least $100 less.
Another possibility is the Asus EEE PC (warning: huge honking stupid Flash site.)
I agree with Gaffa and Astro - if you dont need the power for gaming, they have some reasonable priced systems on special at HP/Dell, and a friend of mine has the cutest little EEE and she loves it for on the road. My spare laptop is an HP refurbished HPdv9000 [unfortunately they loaded it with vista and I have not yet gotten around to putting XP on it, since I have a spare XP laying around] IIRC I spent about $600 plus shipping, and just slapped in the second gig of RAM since they just built it with the minimum, and it was something like $58 from a parts store.
Second the motion, if you can live with the small keyboard. My son, whose only computer is a Toshiba laptop, got one to have something smaller to travel with. He absolutely loves it, and the Linux has about sold him on putting that on his main computer.
But can I use MS Word on the EEE? One of the things I do need to do is port documents back-and-forth between a travel laptop, home, and work, and that means I need to edit Word documents. I’d be open to using Open Office (which it looks like the EEE comes with), as long as it’s absolutely guaranteed that I can transfer files back and forth to MS.
I haven’t had any problems opening MSWord documents in OO, but I also haven’t been using my EEE for a lot of word processing. Why don’t you download OO onto your current computer and see if it does what you need it to do.
I just bought a Dell Vostro 1000 in the base configuration except with 2 GB of RAM instead of 1. After shipping it cost $607. The business side of Dell sold it, so there’s no trialware. It seems like a very nice, solid computer, and it has Ethernet and wireless networking and a modem built in. I’d guess that by skipping the RAM upgrade and waiting around for a sale I could have gotten the price lower by $50 or $75.
I’ve got a 17" Vostro that I bought at the Dell outlet store refurbished with the standard warranty. It’s got Windows XP Pro, a sort of slow dual core Intel processor, 2GB of memory, a 320 GB drive, and a R/W DVD burner. It cost $600. It is not something I would want to carry around an airport.
I’ve also got the aforementioned ASUS eee. It’s the computer that one can easily toss into your daypack. I don’t do much heavy lifting on it, but when I’m on the road, all I really need is internet access and the Open Office applications. It’s a sweet cute light machine, but suffers a bit due to it’s crappy vertical resolution. Google Maps falls off the page and doesn’t have a scroll bar, effectively eliminating the ability to zoom out. I’ve been told that a 10" model has already been released in Asia, so I would consider waiting for that one.
By the way, you can get the ASUS eee with Windows XP. Dell is still offering XP through the end of June, so I assume ASUS will do the same. I can’t imagine running Vista with 512 MB of memory.
Open Office seems very compatible with MS Office, although I haven’t tried running anything with macros which is probably an issue.