Craigslist Laptop

Dekabal

I found an Alienware m11x (not r2) on craiglist and I was able to talk the guy into dropping the price to $400. It has 250 gb hard drive and 2 gb of RAM. Would this be a good deal and what kind of things should I look for when I go to look at it (i've never bought a laptop off craigslist before)

Happy Holidays,

Dekabal

Burns

Late reply due to the holiday hangout forum, but try not to go alone if you can get a buddy to go with. Quite a few robberies have been reported resulting from a craigslist posting that got haggled down without too much resistance since the perpetrator didn't have a product to sell from the start.

W.R.T. what to look for, make sure there's a Certificate of Authenticity attached so you can reactivate easily if you reformat (which I would). Make sure the screen hinges support the LCD so it doesn't flop when at an angle. Possibly look for dead pixels or uneven lighting on the panel.

Good luck.

Robman

Run a game if you can on the laptop, make sure you stress-test it for 5-10 minutes. I'd also take a USB key to make sure all the ports work, etc.

Also unplug it to make sure the battery can still hold a charge... ideally, running a game on it while unplugged will tell you a) if the cooling system is shot or b) if the battery is shot.