Looking for a REALLY cheap laptop

Martin

Hey,

I'll be working in the showband of a cruise ship this summer, and I can't bring my awesome desktop computer, so I need to find a REALLY cheap laptop. All it needs to do is connect to the net, run firefox or IE, MSN, and have a USB port. I don't care how slow it is.

Thanks guys.
Martin

Wezoin

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8231148&type=product&productCategoryId=pcmcat103700050018&id=1167445400717

How about this? It's $500, it's a celeron though, but apparently comes with Windows Vista (which I dont think you'll find for that price almost anywhere else) I dunno, I'm sure if you ebayed or something you could find alot cheaper ones.

Mothercruncher

Can you jack the Windows Vista installation from a laptop and put it onto another computer and then just put Linux on the laptop?

Air

if you only need the basics you could get an old pentium 2 or 3 laptop couldnt you?

you could probably save a lot of money, especially if size isnt a huge problem, since older laptops tend to be kinda chunky

but there are still some small old laptops if you look around


id say look at ebay unless you can find any stores or markets that have second hand computers

reddog

Check Craigslist. There's always a bunch of people selling their old Pentium 2's and 3's there for cheap. You could even get an old Apple laptop for cheap too if you want.

Martin

Cool, ok. Yeah, I'm not looking for a 500 dollar one with Vista, I don't care if it's running 3.1 as long as it can connect to the internet. I'll look around.

Mothercruncher

Can cruiseships even connect to the internet?

Tini

Mothercruncher wrote:

Can cruiseships even connect to the internet?

Yes. It's just some don't offer full wifi. Some have libraries with computers in them for your use.

Cptn Pants

Does the battery have to work? Because a lot of these old laptops batteries are dead or very nearly dead and a new battery for a laptop will cost you upwards of $50.

Wezoin

Martin wrote:

Cool, ok. Yeah, I'm not looking for a 500 dollar one with Vista, I don't care if it's running 3.1 as long as it can connect to the internet. I'll look around.

Only reason I really mentioned it was because it was cheaper than any of the refurbs from Dell, which I pretty much assumed was the cheapest you could get a computer from anywhere other than ebay or garagesales.

DaySleeper

t Mothercruncher: Probably you cannot. Laptop installation disks for Windows tend to be pretty picky about where they will and will not be installed.