I have a couple of laptops at home in various stages of disrepair, the nicest of which is the least likely I will ever get to run (700mhz Thinkpad). The crappiest one is the one that works, cept for the busted hard-disk. I have been shopping around for a hard-disk and been weeping at the prices, way out of my means.
Conversation at work today:
Workmate : “I just bought a new laptop”
Me: “Oooh, congrats, what you doing with the old one?” (sort of a reflex question, I don’t know why I asked, I don’t have the cash to go buying computers at the moment…)
WM: “Dunno, would you like it?”
Me: “Hell yeah, can I give you a few quid for it?” (expecting her to say like, gimme like a hundred dollars…)
WM: “Say 10 dollars?”
I agreed instantly thinking what the hell, even if it is completely non-functioning, whats 10 bucks. I had an attack of the guilts during the afternoon however and realised that she probably didn’t that even in the condition she described (some screen problem, missing power cord, bought 1998) she could probably get a couple of hundred bucks for it, so I said to her that she would be sure to be able to get more if she were to sell it online.
WM: “Ah, no, I am just happy to get rid of it”.
Wheee, conscience salved and I still get a laptop for ten dollars!
I am going to give her some of games I no longer play as a present for her new computer tho.
I am so excited I won’t be able to sleep tonite, I don’t get to see it until 5pm tomorrow and I can’t wait to discover what it is, she didn’t know anything about its stats or so. I rekon if nothing else, I should get a hard-disk to my other lap-top out of this deal! Go me! I will let you know tomorrow what the computer actually was.
Well well well, ten dollars well spent, I got me a H-P Omnibook XE2!
It appears to have around 4.8 gigs and 32 megs ram, with
space for another ram chip. It is very pretty, dark blue, has cd and diskette, one usb and a built in modem. The keyboard is well laid out, the keys are kinda soft and comfy and they are grey with yellow text! Like! Much!
The CD player can be powered up by itsself, without starting the computer, so you can listen to cds etc. I already have a portable mp3/Cd player so that’s not an enormous bonus, but still fun.
And now to the bad news. Sniff.
The screen is like a left to right, dark to light gradient. You can barely see the left side of the screen and the right isn’t amazingly bright either, but its a lot lot better. I have reason to believe that it is a busted backlight. I should be able to replace it tho easily enough, might be able to strip one out of the thinkpad mentioned above, the 3 thousand dollar thinkpad… Damned thinkpad…
I buy used notebooks all the time on Ebay and I think that at “a couple of hundred bucks for it” you are potentially over estimating what she could have gotten for it (with the screen problem) on Ebay. XE2s are typically 3-4 years old at this point and a couple of hundred bucks is all I would pay for the unit in perfect operating condition.
Go me!