Buying a laptop from ebay

J

Jpl29801

New Member
I'm a college student, and my courses start in 3 weeks. I need a laptop for communication, and for school work. Obviously, as a college student, I do not have a large budget. I've been searching Ebay for laptops and found one I like, but I also want to be cautious with it. The seller has a 99.6% positive feedback, and here are the describtions, if you do not mind taking you time reading them to help me.

This Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop is tested to work in excellent condition and it is sold with a 30 day warranty. It comes ready to use and it features the following:
1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
60GB hard drive
1GB DDR2 memory
17" WXGA LCD in good condition
CD-RW/DVD combo drive burns CDs and reads DVDs
802.11g fast internal wireless card
battery holds a charge but it is not covered by warranty
AC adapter is included
cosmetic condition is good
software and manual are not included
Shipping to continental US confirmed address only. Payment is due in 7 days.


Thank you very much..it says it is used, but I like the describitions, and I like that the seller has such a high positive feedback score.
 
sounds good, but you didn't post a price so can't say if it's a good deal or not, and 17'' lappys tend to get a little on the heavier side and not too fun to carry around.
 
Sorry, it is 199.99, and 20 with shipping, so about 220. Not bad at all in my opinion. I've seen so many overpriced laptops, and I can't afford them.
 
I bought my first laptop from eBay, not a bad place to buy anything really. but I don't know how good of a deal that is for only 60 gbs
 
jonnyp11 said:
sounds pretty good, and just thought you might wanna see this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0F&PID=4169961&SID=1lqkti754rdng&AID=10521304

and if you had a max budget that site has some pretty cheap stuff normally, and it is a great and trustworthy site, can see all specs and revies of the stuff.
Click to expand...

This would probably be like x2 slower than the one on ebay. Also, there's the small screen. but it does have more disk space. @Jpl29801, I guess you have a choice of [ebay] speed & screen space, or [newegg] disk, compactness, and a slow CPU.
 
my point in the one i posted was the ease of portability and larger storage which may be necessary and easier than the huge 17'' along with a backup drive too, and other than multitasking that netbook would be fast enough to do anything most likely, brother's got a couple year old eee pc which is probably almost the same performance and only has had one or 2 issues with it with adobe flash apps i think which wanted more cpu and gpu than these have, but rarely.
 
A 17" you will need a suitcase to carry it.
Nice, butttt........heavy.

Might or could consider Craigslist also.
 
macbooks, or apple really, tend to be overpriced like hell compared to an equivilant pc, and mac's can't game nearly as well, since most games aren't made for them, and mac's use a diferent coding and socket type in most of their products that cause the performance to drop alot compared to the same card on a pc.
 
Bull johnny.
OSX is more efficient at using its resources. The same hardware will get better performance in OSX vs Windows (even 7).
Mac doesnt have a different socket, but rather the CPU is soldered to the motherboard.
Gaming, 99% of games these days either come cross coded (will work on both), or has a MAC version.
 
well i remember someone telling me that macs used them less efficiently, and actually depending on the mac they do use different sockets than pc's, look in an imac, it's freaky.
 
But he's a broke college student, looking for a cheap laptop for internet and word processing, etc, not gaming. You don't need a mac. The computer does sound pretty good. It does only have 60GB, but for a college-use laptop, its perfect. That is, if it has an OS on it. Doesn't say anything on that.
 
wolfeking said:
even if it doesnt have an OS, there are plenty of linux distros that could be used, and are free.
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If its this one http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-INSPIRON-E...60200175?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item2c5e45e5ef then it has XP on it already.

A consideration here is that at college you need to be able to install and use software provided by the college. THis is risky if using a non-standard OS. Also, not sure if MS OFfice will work on linux. Also, you can get Win XP on ebay for 20 bucks legit. Not worth messing around. The item looks like a good deal, better if it has win 7 installed.

It seems fairly well supported with Vista drivers too, so you are likely to be able to install windows 7 on it later if you wish http://support.dell.com/support/dow...&s=bsd&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WW1&osl=EN

Full specs here http://www.dell.com/content/topics/.../en/inspn_e1705_sp_spec?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

I reckon its a good deal.
 
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you said no software in the discription and you didn't mention an operating system if you have no operating system it would pointless to buy because an operating system would be about 200$ for windows 7 which you would then have to upgrade the ram. but if thats windows xp thats a great laptop. you can get a new laptop that is for sure good from circuitcity. http://www.circuitcity.com/applicat...90CO&cm_mmc=EML-_-Main-_-CCEM690-_-circuit690 thats a really good deal for only 299$ (and you know what your getting, and your buying from a company not just some random person)
 
bigfellla said:
If its this one http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-INSPIRON-E...60200175?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item2c5e45e5ef then it has XP on it already.

A consideration here is that at college you need to be able to install and use software provided by the college. THis is risky if using a non-standard OS. Also, not sure if MS OFfice will work on linux. Also, you can get Win XP on ebay for 20 bucks legit. Not worth messing around. The item looks like a good deal, better if it has win 7 installed.

It seems fairly well supported with Vista drivers too, so you are likely to be able to install windows 7 on it later if you wish http://support.dell.com/support/dow...&s=bsd&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WW1&osl=EN

Full specs here http://www.dell.com/content/topics/.../en/inspn_e1705_sp_spec?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

I reckon its a good deal.
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Office 2003 and 2007 will work under WINE in Linux. As will most programs with enough muscle behind it.
 
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