What have been your best/worst computer deals?

[KBD]

When my eldest daughter was in the early stages of founding her company (Policygenius.com), her first business purchace was a Lenovo X230 that was to be her road warrior. After 5 years it booted to the blue screen of death and she bought a new X1 Carbon. I told her to mail the X230 to me as I like tinkering with old stuff. I pulled the hard drive, installed an SSD, installed Linux, and have been using the machine for the past several years. In fact I am posting from it now. So free is a pretty good deal

I recently bought a Lenovo T440s with I7, 8GB RAM, 1920x1080 touchscreen, and 500GB drive for $280. I swapped the hard drive for an SSD and it is now my media machine as it has a great display. My newest laptops are Intel Gen 4s, which is plenty new for me...

A X230 is on my 'wish list'. I would like to eventually upgrade to one from my X220, but the X220 looks like it will last forever :)

[Cristobal]

Regarding computer, I think a good deal is when you feel that you have paid a fair price.

After my eeePC died 3 years ago, I was enchanted to pay less than £100 for a refurbished Thinkpad; it was some kind of revelation (discovering this range and the "cult" around it). Cool little laptop with clever design (drain holes for instance), of which some parts are easy to replace/repair, built like a tank and which works like a charm with an OS such as linux. Got the same kind of deal recently for my back up laptop (same model).

Business class laptops are great, especially Thinkpads. They regularly come off of lease and if you are looking at the right time can get a good deal. I've had 7-8 Thinkpads over the years. They are great machines for the money and incredibly durable. Also they run Linux well, at least the intel ones do.

Funnily enough, I've discovered the Thinklight 5 minutes ago... Another great idea/functionality.

[jeffreyC]

The one bad thing about ThinkPads is the whitelist in the BIOS for network cards, which only allows them to boot with their approved cards installed. You can't just buy a faster WiFi card and put it in, you need one with their code to give the secret handshake, and of course those cost more - even though they are the same in all other ways.

[genericmeatsack]

Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

[Stevo]

Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

Some laptops make that part replacable with just a screwdriver...but I don't have the service manual for that one.

[turtlebay777]

Well, you can't beat free.

My freebie printer is an HP Laserjet 1022 which a guy was throwing because he couldn't find a driver to use with Win 7. It's still working with MX 18. New toner drum for it a couple of years ago Compatible HP Q2612A Black Toner Cartridge £16.98 inc VAT delivered.

[xali]

Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

Some laptops make that part replacable with just a screwdriver...but I don't have the service manual for that one.

i know almost nothing about these, but can this link help? https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2011/ ... tallation/

[KBD]

Funnily enough, I've discovered the Thinklight 5 minutes ago... Another great idea/functionality.

It is a nice feature, but I tend to forget it's there :)

[mxer]

I still prefer small form factor laptops. I only have one laptop out of 5 that is over 12" screen.

I agree, 12~14" screens are great, I have one 15.6" HP laptop that I only use as a desktop machine, because I find the screen too big for me at close range.

[JayM]

The best computer deal I've ever had is my little £200 netbook which I bought in 2008.
It's an ' Akoya E1210 'Mini' ' which is basically just a re-branded MSI U-100 'Wind' netbook. It has a 32bit Atom processor, 2GB ram (came with just 1GB), onboard intel GMA graphics and a 1024x600 display. It came with Windows XP but very soon was converted to a Linux machine, having hosted Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Salix, and of course various releases of MX. It now happily purrs along using MX-18.3 32bit.
This machine has worked flawlessly and on a daily basis since 2008. I've never had any other hardware that has lasted so long without croaking or needing replacement parts.
(edited to remedy early morning typos)

The early netbooks were tough little beasts. I had one I particularly liked and still miss today. It was an Acer KAV60. I'd still probably have the thing but a hard drive burned up in it and filled it with toxic fumes so that I had to pitch it.
I still prefer small form factor laptops. I only have one laptop out of 5 that is over 12" screen.

Yep. Even the cheaper ones like the Averatec N1170, made by Trigem in Korea, that I bought for my wife in 2010 as a birthday gift and am currently using. An Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz single-core 32-bit CPU (slow, utilization maxes out often, but never gets hotter than 56C in a hot climate and it's rated at up to 90C.) Came with 1GB RAM upgraded to 2GB, its memory never gets beyond 65% utilization now. Some keys no longer work, the touchpad died years ago, the batteries no longer take a charge, the BIOS reverts to original settings (date: 01/01/2005) whenever AC power's disconnected, but the darn thing still runs and works, albeit rather slowly. I paid around ₱12,000/$250 for it new (computers, smartphones, digicams and other tech gadgets cost more in the Philippines than in many other countries including the US and EU.) It works best with antiX but I'm currently running MX on it with the 4.9.0-9-686-pae i686 Debian kernel. It even works OK with the stock 4.19.05 kernel (but I'm testing this one to see if it's better on this system or not.)