What's the best of the cheapest laptops for my modest intentions?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
1

I’m going to buy a laptop, primarily, to have in the living room next to the digital piano, for downloading (and playing) midifiles and uploading these, when needed to my piano.

What’s the best deal for me?

I’ve been thinking Dell, B120 at

Processor: Intel® Celeron® M 360 (1.40 GHz/1MB Cache/400MHz FSB)
Memory:512MB Shared, 2 DIMM Memory and
Hard Drive: 404 Gig

Cost: $449 (with rebates) and $24 S&H

Is this about as good as it gets for my purposes. It has speakers for listeining to music and I’m not too concerned with super quality sound. Basically, I just want the notes and tempo.

2

Damn! Damn! Damn!

What’s the best - not the test.

3

As far as new computers from a reputable manufacturer, they don’t get much cheaper than that and I would be very suspect of one that was. It looks like a pretty good deal. Of course, any reasonably modern laptop (less than 6 years old) would probably be fine as well and it is possible to find one of those for very little or even free if you get lucky.

4

I was hoping you’d say something like that, Shagnasty, :slight_smile: but where? I wouldn’t want to risk anything at Ebay. Is there a site you could recommend?

5

The problem is that most laptops that people formally put up for sale are generally overvalued for what they are and often by a lot. You can find cheap laptops and you can find good laptops but it is difficult to find a cheap laptop of good quality on sites like E*Bay.

I work in IT and run run across both individuals and computers that just give pretty good computers away pretty frequently. People that have newer ones often aren’t interested in going through a formal sale so they just hand them out. Unfortunately, my SIL who is poor at the moment asked me this same question last week and I told her that but I don’t know where any free or good cheap ones are at the moment.

6

Okay.

But when something comes up, might you email me?

7

I wish to subscribe to this newsletter too

8

You might try the online craigslist for your city. I just sold one myself for $85, and there seem to be quite a few at fair prices on the Phoenix site.

My suggestion is that if you find one that sounds suitable, you make an offer of around 75 percent of the asking price, or even lower if you are brave. Then if they call or email you, you can haggle.

It’s free and a lot less of a hassle than eBay.

9

<mod>

Fixed thread title.

Moving to IMHO. You are asking for opinions.

</mod>

10

The Circuit City and Best Buy notebooks on sal for 500 or so are also (generall) good deals. Of the Dells I’d suggest paying $ 50 more for the faster 15 inch screen B130 vs the slower 14 inch B120. A 256 meg mem chip to bring them to parity is quite inexpensive.