january is filled with changes. i'm moving closer to downtown and getting a laptop as well. planning on ordering a laptop by saturday at the latest and have come up with this one: toshiba at overstock.com anybody with any good, bad, or uglies about getting this guy? any experience with refurb notebooks? i'm not gonna be playing games or anything (too busy for that). just using it along with a pc card with service through verizon wireless. just using it to look trendy in a coffee shop or something. playing around on the net with the pc card is all that it's going to be used for... cf.net, p*rn (funny... i'm too busy for games, but not to busy for this), and the news. that's all... nothing more... nothing less. i just don't wanna buy a piece of crap... know what i mean? is this refurb ok? thanks in advance (or advanced... i dunno).
seems like a ok deal. if u purchase any laptop with 256 megs of ram, i would suggest adding another 256-512.
You can get a brand new laptop with better specs from Dell for about the same price. Browse around their site a bit... also check out all of the coupon sites for free add-ons, upgrades or rebates. As said above, I wouldn't get anything with less then 512MB of RAM though. http://www.gottadeal.com http://www.slickdeals.net to name a few.
cool. noticed the ram as well and though the same. just was somewhat hesitant to spend on a refurb, but enough oks and i'll go for it. ram only thing you noticed?
If you don't mind refurb's Dell has a huge selection in their outlet from the website... can get even more bang for your buck.
I've purchased Dell refurbs in the past for family members and client's, but none for myself (I build my PCs)... and have never had any problems. Their support on refurbs is just as good as it is on new items, and Dell's support is top notch when compared to any other PC manufacturer... the only one that even comes close to Dell's support is IBM but their machines are geared more toward business use and are pricier (especially laptops).
thanks again, guys. saved a total of 105 bucks so far with all the coupon links above. i'm such a cheap b*stard. just hoping that the refurb will at least function.
IMO refurb is better than brand new... you get the same warranty and everything, plus any problems it had is already fixed
Um, no. Dell still clings to their "award winning" service label from back when their service actually won awards- like 5-7 years ago. Once they made it big (is there anyone bigger now?) there was no way their customer service could keep up with sales. Dell is the poster child for awful customer support, and is one of the worst-ranked in customer/technical support in the computer business for years running. Their QC isn't much worse than others, though, and if you get a good computer with no problems, you're golden. If you have any problems, however, or have to get technical support or a refund or anything of the kind, prepeare for a long slow hell. If I started a thread here in Hagout just to collect stories from posters here about bad experiences from Dell, I bet we'd have dozens of stories.
ok... getting mixed reviews from dell. i had a dell in mind at first, but now after reading what some of you are saying i'm not sure. i saw in a previous thread that DoD had a dell 6000, which seems to be one of the more popular. the suckers are huge (i've seen a few coworkers with them, but haven't asked about their performance, durability, etc). i know from experience also that this particular model isn't compatible with the pc card i ordered that should arrive in the coming days (done some troubleshooting with the 6000 and the card). soooo, the 6000 is out the window... just don't want to have to wait any longer to switch the order for the card (it's already taken forever for it to arrive). which takes me back to the toshiba that i originally posted. the ram seems to be the only question about it. props to clutch with some of the ads that have popped up in this thread. i see that i can buy more and upgrade it rather inexpensively for the model that i mentioned at the beginning of this thread. ok... one last thing. processors. amd, pentium m, etc. what should i be looking for and should i be overly concerned with processing speeds? thanks again.
I've only worked on and/or purchased thousands of Dells, HP/Compaqs and IBMs in the past 7 or 8 years... but what the hell do I know? If you get the run around from Dell because of a bad system or parts, then you didn't push hard enough to get what you wanted from the support guys. Dell routinely overnights parts free of charge to their customers, large or small... you just have to request and sometimes demand it. Omega, buy what you want... just giving you the opinion of a guy who has the purchasing power for an entire company and who has extensive experience with Dell. I can tell you that Toshiba has no support when compared to Dell, HP or IBM because their market isn't big enough, they are a niche seller... I would imagine that they don't even have support offices state-side since they are a foreign company.
If you just use the machine to cruise the web and other business apps you'd be perfectly happy with a celeron, but I'd still go pentium M... anything around 1.5GHz should do you fine for a few years to come. Just another side note about Dell... you hear stories regarding Dell (good or bad) far more then you do about Toshiba or other niche sellers because Dell sells millions of computers a year, their customer base is thousands of times larger then other sellers... just something to keep in mind.
read this article before you purchase your notebook. http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?action=fullnews&id=17 as for me, i have a dell 600m which i purchased for $800 new half a year ago. pentium m 1.8, 768 megs of ram, 60 gig hd, dvd player, built in intel craphix card. i built a notebook for my brother a few months ago, asus 15.4', nvidia 6800, 2 gigs of ram, 100 gig hd, dvd burner, pentium 4 3.2 for $1,600. If your adventurous, you could do what I did for my brother. Purchase a asus barebones, buy the rest of the components and build it yourself. www.directron.com is local and they sell asus barebone notebook kits.
well, chow... i'm adventurous, but my wallet isn't. otherwise i would. i'm more interested in hearing how you got your dell for 800 bucks with a pentium m. upgraded i'm sure. or no? thanks for all the advice again, guys. i'm keeping a look out at the dell outlet site and also keeping in mind the toshiba. it's just a good deal after all the coupons. less than 700 bucks and then a tad bit more to up the ram (reading all the reviews from different mags, it seemed like that was it's only sticking point).
I purchased my Dell when they used to have their famous $750 off $1,500 deals which is now extinct. Dell realized they were making very little profits albiet selling a ton of notebooks so they restructured their price/marketing.
promise this is the last thing... why are acer laptops so cheap with the pentium m and loaded ram? problem with durability, overheating, ... overall functionality? it's crunch time. either 1. i'm getting a different one today from a store or 2. i'm ordering the toshiba online today.
Actually, Dell is VERY famous for allowing you to stack multiple coupons and getting things VERY, VERY cheap. Take the Widescreen 20.1" UltraSharp Monitor for example, about 6 weeks ago you could stack multiple coupons together and get this nearly $600 monitor for $289 bucks shipped... and you could do it multiple times!!! Dell is very famous for this, and if you are patient and watch the coupon sites in a few weeks you could easily have a $1000-$1200 laptop for roughly $750-$800 bucks. They are also famous for having "upgrade" coupons where you can double your RAM or throw in a DVD Burner or Printer at no extra cost... Like Wal-Mart/Sam's being the biggest kid on the block gives them the ability to do things like that.
