Yesterday, I bought two laptops on e-bay.
I have a friend here in Lennoxville who, now that she’s retired, is getting into the cyberworld. So she asked me to find her a laptop, not too expensive, whose primary functions will be e-mail and surfing.
Yesterday, I found her machine. Nice little HP, reasonably priced, no bells and whistles, and just enough power to avoid d-o-w-n-l-o-a-d-i-n-g frustrations.
Then, since I was in the market for my own new machine, I kept looking…
This morning I am the new owner of a wide-screen!!
The specs (you know you want ’em):
Mobile AMD Athlon™ XP-M 2200+ Processor with QuantiSpeed™ architecture
512 MB DDR
15.4″ Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA (1280 x 800 max. resolution)
32MB ATI® RADEON™ IGP Video
40 GB HDD
DVD/CD-RW Combo (CD-read 24x; CD-write 24x; CD-rewrite 10x; DVD-read 8x)
Li-ion Battery Internal
56K* ITU V.92 Fax/Modem
10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet
Touchpad with vertical Scroll Zone
AC ’97 Audio, Built-in Stereo Speakers
6.5 lbs. with battery
3 USB ports, 1 VGA external connector, 1 Parallel Port, 1 S-Video Out, Microphone In, Line Out, PCMCIA Slot (Card Bus type I and type II)
1.36″h x 14.0″w x 10.0″d
They’ve also thrown in a few hundred dollars worth of software, none of which will be of any real use to me (AOL? Compuserve? please – they even listed Acrobat Reader) – but it’s the thought that counts.
I spent way too many hours on-line yesterday, scoping out other systems, and this one is pretty much identical to those I checked out at Dell, Future Shop, Bureau en Gros and Microbytes. Granted, the HD is only 40 GB, but since my current machine is operating with 10 GB, I’m not complaining.
Dell wanted close to $3000 (ok, 80 GB HD, 64 MB video, and wireless access, but still).
Bureau en Gros, Future Shop and Microbytes all wanted at least $1900, before taxes and shipping.
My winning bid was $1325.
After shipping, tax (GST only, since the seller is in Toronto and I’m here), and insurance, we’re still well under $1500.
So I’m a happy girl this morning.
I still really, really, really want a cigarette 🙁 But now I can tell myself that if not for quitting, that widescreen would still be just another listing to pause and drool over.
Just in case anyone wants to have a look at the beast in question.
hmmm…
My DW is percolating a laptop purchase… I’ll keep eBay in mind. That was a good deal.
I don’t trust people enough to buy anything worth more than $50 off of eBay. I know everyone else does it, but I haven’t got enough faith in human nature to fork out that much cash without having a box and a useful guarantee in my hands.
Completely understandable. This is my second big e-bay purchase (or second and third, really), and the time from hitting enter on PayPal to opening the package and making sure everything’s kosher can be terrifying.
Suffice it to say, the new machine she is fiiiiiine, and I’m happy, if slightly less wealthy.
I can’t believe I’ve been going for years whiotut knowing that.
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