Great new (old) laptop

Visited several resellers a few times and very impressed at the “bang for bucks” value at Micro Dream, which seems to have a more professional appearance than others . When I finally get around to retiring desktops, I will look again.

Dave Rice wrote:

I just wish more people would trust me when I say buy refurbished!

No you don’t – that would push prices up. Lets keep it as a money saving secret!

You don’t need to convince me either, Dave. I’ve never bought a new lappie and never would. Let someone else take the financial hit that occurs when the box a new laptop comes in is opened. You can almost see a large chunk of money floating off instantly into the sky.

Besides laptops of the nature of their typical use suffer more physical abuse than a desktop. Kitchen tables are dangerous places for such wee things. I would hazard a guess that far less than 5% of laptops ever survive to what should be their usable life. Laptop keyboards, always a vulnerability, these days are not as easily replaced as they once were. So bash them too hard, give them a taste of one’s coffee or the wayward cat’s claws lift a keycap or two and it is quite often exit laptop stage left to trash can; after the ram and sdd/hd has been removed of course.

A refurb/used lappie in good to excellent condition seems to me the only rational choice. Less cost at the outset and less loss when the inevitable occurs. And when the inevitable does occur simply go grab another one.

Looking at the market though such opportunities are diminishing almost by the day.   A lot of folks who once had company laptops are now issued instead with tablets.   So the number of ex-company laptops on the market is very noticeably falling.   I can name around a half dozen used laptop retailers in the UK who have in the last eighteen months ceased trading totally or at least in that sector.   The ones that remain seem in general to have less stock.   Sad.

Back on Dave’s original post I am in the market and having a gander on Amazon and ebay looks like there’s a fair few variants of this. Dave would you have a link to the one you got (even if it is a different seller/price). It would be replacing my Asus S200e (doesn’t owe me anything and will itself replace our communal laptop). On the WiFi – I move a lot of large media files around between devices so really want/need AC at a decent speed. If the WiFi upgradable (internally – i.e. a card swap).  Have the Intel AC7260 card in mine and would ideally like similar – but I know in the Lenovo refurbs they won’t stand for a non-standard WiFi card (well my old X220 didn’t anyway). Ta!

Cheers Dave – appreciate it. Its a bugger about the Wifi – do you know if that would also apply to a USB adapter? Still very tempted especially seeing a it has a nup/nipple as well as the touchpad. £273 seems a steal.

While I can understand the issue with an internal WiFi device not being white listed by the BIOS, external ones are sold specifically to overcome the issues of an inbuilt one failing, being missing  or falling short on performance. I can see no reason why an external USB device should not work, subject only to ensuring that the USB is compatible, (i.e. USB version 2 not version 3). They are quiet inexpensive at >£20 for a range of well known makers. So if you need one to try when the device arrives if the WiFi is too slow, there is good reason to be optimistic. After all you can usually use a USB mouse to bypass a tracker pad should you so wish.