Anyone ever buy a laptop off ebay?

Getting my bonus check plus my regular check the 15th...Woohoo!!! Gonna have some extra cash to play with...$600 is already set aside for my Les Paul...what to do with the rest? Thinking of buying a laptop, and seeing some pretty attractive prices on what seem to be nice laptops...just curious if anyone has bought a laptop from ebay and your opinions/experience from doing so...........

I've bought a few. Experiences have been slightly mixed, nothing really bad. My basic requirement is that I call the person on the phone and discuss the laptop and I get the sense that he's legit. When I've gone through with such a transaction for a used laptop it's always worked out. Once or twice though, the person seemed dodgy so I just let the transaction drop, which in principle lets the person get ebay after me as a non-paying bidder, but in fact they never pursued that, since they probably realized that it would snap back at them.

The laptop I'm using now, I bought supposedly new from a dealer, and it was supposed to be sealed in a box, but in fact the box had been opened (supposedly to install an upgrade or something) and the XP Pro preinstall was all screwed up. But I wanted to wipe the HD anyway and install GNU/Linux, so I didn't care about XP Pro. Basically I think I got a demo machine sold as a new machine, but the price was very good, so I still feel I did ok.

There are also amazing deals in new laptops these days, so check out all your options before buying used.

ask member "grnamin" here on CPF, me and my friend bought a few laptop from him, he's a very good guy.

The thing with buying new is that I don't have a lot of money to spend on a new system with all the features I want. What I want will probably run at least $1000 or most likely, more.

I need something with HD capacity, wireless int (either an onboard 802.11 or PCMCIA card of the like). Basically, I'll be using it to surf the net at hotspots and record, edit, and mix my music (the stuff I actually write and compose). I figure a P4 or high speed P3 will do the trick..........

I bought a few used Powerbooks from eBay a couple of years ago. All positive experiences, and I received the goods in acceptable condition from halfway around the world.

I would recommend that you check out carefully the seller's reputation, as well as find alternate sources for purchase. eBay is not necessarily always the cheapest place you can buy things.

I've never purchased a laptop on Ebay, but have a friend that has. He always uses an escrow service.

oldgrandpajack

I've bought quite a few. The systems I use for a mail server and my web server are both laptops purchased via E-bay.

Things you have to watch for; First and formost is that that the hard-drive may be dying. I've bought one computer for the parts that was "freshly reformatted". This covered up that bad sectors of the hard drive that had been mapped out. It finished going bad a few months later. Not a problem since I was going to canabalize it anyway.

The other problem is batteries at the end of their life. They charge OK, but only run for a fraction of the time they should. This is a common problem with computers with Li-Ion batteries that are around 3 years old.

If at all possible, make sure you get the disks it came with. They can be invaluable if you buy a system with a marginal disk expecting to used the bundled version of MS office or some other package.

Daniel

I've bought two for myself and two directly for other folks. Had good experiences all the way around. The only one I still have is an older 233 MHz, but it has 384 MB of ram and and in all honesty, works pretty darn well with Windows XP. Takes a while to boot up, but afterwards, runs relatively well. Keeping in mind, I'm not one to have outdated computer equipment. I've been thinking about trying some of the various forms of Linux on it to see if it runs any faster. Pretty much all I do with it is look at pictures, text and PDF files, get on the internet and listen to MP3s. I also have a bunch of speaker design programs and driver info loaded. I can watch DiVX movies on it, but I can't run them quite at full screen with full smoothness.

If I was looking today, I'd probably look for something in the 733MHz to 1GHz range. That, with 512MB will run surprisingly fast. Mostly, I'd like something a bit lighter weight and thinner and with better video capability. I haven't done any music editing or mixing on a laptop, or at all in the last 5 or 6 years, but I bet you'd be surprised how well it might run with a decent amount of memory.

glockboy said:

ask member "grnamin" here on CPF, me and my friend bought a few laptop from him, he's a very good guy.

Click to expand...

Me, too. I'm very happy with the laptop I bought from him.

Laserfreak, if you just want a basic, cheap, relatively fast laptop, I'd buy a new one, maybe one of the Acer Aspire series with an AMD processor (even a Turion if you want real speed). They start around $550 for 32-bit models and $800 for 64 bits. They either have wifi included or you can add it as a very cheap PC card. You probably do want to upgrade the HD and/or add an external one (USB2).

Never bought one, but I did sell a few, never got any complaints

Bought one, paid $1500 and didn't get it.
Never ever, under any freaking circumstances pay via Western Union! I've learned it the hard way.

I don't know if you're looking into new/refurbished ones, but I've bought tons of used laptops off eBay, as well as all over the place. Older Toshiba, Thinkpad, and Dell Lattitudes are my favorites. Can't stand the new ones. If you are going used there are some things to check. My priorities:

1. Make sure there's no case damage and it hasn't been dropped. The parts aren't usually expensive to fix but it's a seriously complicated job. Would get expensive if you didn't do it yourself. Same goes for loose or breaking screen hinges.

2. Check for display problems. Lots of dead pixels, bad backlights, weird lines or flickering as the screen it tilted it. Super expensive to fix unless it's just a cable.

3. Make sure the battery is good, although if you get a good deal it's no problem if it's dead. New ones are always available.

4. Hard drive. This actually is the least important to me. Newer, faster, bigger ones are always available. Lots of folks won't even sell a laptop with a hard drive now, for security concerns. I was given one by a client yesterday and someone had cut the drive in half.

5. Everything else. Removable drives, modems, etc. If any of this stuff requires special cables or adapters you want to be sure they're included. Folks selling off an old computer frequently forget that xxxxx part used a bunch of oddball connectors.

Be prepared to spend a little more money on the laptop once you get it -- there may be things you need to replace to get it in happy working order. And if you're nitpicky, buying a laptop off eBay might not be the greatest idea. If you want some good prices on laptops, you could also go outside of ebay -- look for refurbished, open box (make sure everything's there!), or even the display model. Dell and Apple have very reasonable prices for their refurbished models, and Apple even sells "last year's" model, brand new, never used, when they are superceded by the very latest. G4 Powerbooks may be headed in that direction soon.

I've been looking for one of those clamshell iBook G3s to fool around with -- pretty old hardware, but they're new enough to be useful for my purposes.