Sub-Notebook Advice (Second Hand)

[planecrazy.eu]

I am looking for a second laptop, for work, travel and stuff that doesnt really involve graphics...

I am looking for 3+ hours bettery, idealy more. Able to upgrade to 1GB ram, and has to have a Centrinio Processor.

I am looking for `12-14" screen, More the smaller end really.

Heres the thing, my Budget is £200, so its an ebay job, problem is, there are loads and loads of different ones, and loads i can even go through to see the specs.

I dont care about the Brand, i dont mind adding £50 or so, but i think £250 is top endish.

So can any one recommend a good second hand laptop with those specs?

I have tried the search, came up with little...

[Saab Dastard]

I'd probably go for an IBM / Lenovo Thinkpad, or a Dell Latitude. There seem to be several on ebay at the moment.

Acer are reasonably well regarded.

Brands to avoid are Toshiba and Fujitsu, as they have not got a good press for quality and reliability these days.

Sony are nice but expensive.

Use the search facility in ebay to narrow down the selection.

A memory upgrade from 512 - 1Gb will cost £25-50, depending on the configuration of memory already installed. Use the Crucial.com/UK online configurator.

SD

[Keef]

I still use a prehistoric IBM ThinkPad, 1.1GHz, that I've had for something like 5 years. It's an excellent machine - certainly not state-of-the-art, but it's been very reliable. I replaced the HD soon after I bought it (wanted more disk space), added some memory, and added the heat sink compound that got left out when they built it.

I'd like a later model ThinkPad really, but can't come up with an excuse to upgrade - this one does everything I need.

£200 would get you one now.

The catch with all these is battery life - especially with older batteries. When it was new, mine would do close to three hours on a battery (depending on what I was doing with it). Nowadays, the battery is lucky to make 45 minutes. I've got mains and car (ie aeroplane) adapters for it, so I haven't bothered to try to trace a NEW replacement battery. (Never buy second-hand or old-stock new batteries!!)

[Temet_Nosce]

I use a Sony vaio T1XP. 40GB HD and DVD burner built in. Also built in WIFI, bluetooth and dial-up modem.

Batt DOES last >4 hours normal use. Pentium M but RAM upgradable to 1MB.

Great little laptop. Superb screen (Xblack).



Here is one on EBay...

[planecrazy.eu]

The old Thinpads are looking good to me at the moment, as too are the Sony laptops.

Found a few nice Tosh laptops, but some one said above to stay clear, so i think i will take the advice...

The sony on ebay seems perfect, great battery life, just a little small on screen size, but 2"'s may not make too much difference.

Thanks for the above advice...

[IO540]

At £200 you are cutting it a little fine to get a decent laptop regardless of the spec.

A genuine 3hr battery life is common now (though amazingly there still are loads of new laptops with a ~1hr battery life) but it was rare a few years ago. Also a used laptop is likely to come with a partially knackered battery and most laptop batteries cost ~ £100 and even that usually only gets you a counterfeit one from Ebay.

I routinely buy laptops in that price range for my work (for use in test rigs which are shipped out to China where I get some stuff assembled) and while they work fine they are basically tatty and well worn and you can forget the batteries.

£300 opens things up a lot more, with plenty of good stuff, and I have just bought a really nice Thinkpad T42 for £380 (14", 1GB RAM, 30GB HD) which is totally unused and in the original box with a 12 month warranty. But with a US keyboard - beware this common little trick!

People will recommend as many laptops as there are people you ask. I like Dell and IBM/Lenovo. You need to decide whether you want a lightweight 12" one; they do cost more than the 14" ex corporate workhorses. Personally I use a Thinkpad X60s-1704 (12", 8hr battery life and built-in GPRS/3G) and very light, but you won't get an x60s for much below £600.

I also used a Dell Latitude L400 lightweight 12" one for a long time and it still works perfectly; you can pick these up for £200 and it's a super machine. But... battery will never make 1hr and no built-in wifi. This one lives in the boot of the plane when I go on long trips; it has a duplicate of the x60s config on it.

The high street consumer laptops are mostly of crap quality (basically anything below £700 new) and are best avoided. The best buys are the corporate-grade laptops sold either unused or refurbished by firms such as this one and a google for "refurbished laptops" turns up a load more. Ebay is another source but I find the prices on Ebay are no lower than elsewhere and since most of the vendors have no telephone number one can't easily check small details like whether the keyboard is a UK one with the £ sign...

[rotorcraig]

The Asus Eee PC is selling new for £220.

Amazing bit of kit if you can find one and are happy with Linux and open source applications (or can wait for the Windows one out in April).

RC

[marlowe]

Have a 12" Dell latitude works great for emails, general surfing while down route easy to pack into crew bag due to size, picked mine up second hand gonna be around £300 though. Only thing i did was bigger hard drive and maxxed the memory on it but that was my preference, worked just fine on original spec.

[planecrazy.eu]

Took all the advice, this i what i came up with and now have...

Ebay

IBM T43

£300 INC DEL/VAT

---

2GHz Centrino
1GB RAM
80GB HDD
64MB Graphics(dedi)
Finger Print Reader
Wi-FI
BT
DVD-RW
92% Battery
+ all the usuals

It has 16 months warrenty left (result)

and the battery is lasting around 4hrs...

Its about 14/5 months old, but its not a bad spec, what i would consider usual wear...

Thanks for the advice...