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Buying a Laptop

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by MileHigh, Oct 14, 2009.

  1. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    That's what we have for work, and I think what we've had at most places I've worked. So I'd agree with your assessment.
     
  2. Beef03

    Beef03 Active Member

    Not sure if they have them where you're at, but went to a Laptop depot for my current machine, a gateway M-series. They sell refurbished laptops, basically new machines on the inside from my understanding. Saved myself a couple hundred bucks and in two years have had zero problems with it. plus from an environmental standpoint keeps a laptop out of the landfill.
     
  3. Tucsondriver

    Tucsondriver Member

    My HP laptop of almost 3 years just died and I'm looking at getting a Macbook. I'm intrigued by the idea of creating a hybrid system. You can connect a macbook (or most newer laptops with VGA outputs) to an external monitor and keyboard. Keep it closed, and it'll act as a desktop machine. and you can also take it with you when you please. You can also do this with a netbook, btw, for a poor man's hybrid system. If you buy a Macbook, or any computer for that matter, check out Amazon. They've got an amazingly liberal return policy, and in most states no tax and free shipping (make sure you buy direct from Amazon, not a third party). I've also checked out some other sites that have refurbed macbooks for as little as 500 to 600. Keyboards and monitors are cheap. If you're willing to go the refurb route, for 800 you could put together a nice hybrid system, and still have money left over to put towards a cheap $200 netbook for covering high school games, or situations where you're worried about theft or having to schlep (macbooks aren't so light). Good luck!
     
  4. bwright

    bwright Member

    Late to the game on this, I know. I'm a little biased, having a background working in a pawn shop. But I will say this, in the couple of years I was there, I saw some great machines leave at pretty jaw-dropping prices.
    There are people out there that are really stupid financially. They'll buy the top of the line, browse the web with it for three months then decide they really need the cash and hock the machine for a fraction of what it's worth.
    This shop also happened to be in a college town, so that probably helped.
     
  5. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Anybody ever used Geek Squad for troubleshooting? Are they worth the price? Still can't get mine to start in normal mode. Tried system restore, startup repair, setup defaults and everything else I can think of. This sucks.
     
  6. Bob Crotchet

    Bob Crotchet Member

    Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't let Geek Squad clean my keyboard. Too many scary stories about their incompetence and overcharging. I suspect it's like most everything: You need to find a good technician and latch on to him/her. But the finding is the hard part. ... At least get Geek Squad or whomever to write down what they're doing and post it back here. That should help with the worst offenses.
     
  7. Bob Crotchet

    Bob Crotchet Member

    A BSOD is often a symptom of a bad driver. Added/upgraded any hardware lately? Does it give you any messages in the BSOD, like a stop code? (Note: I'm guessing here since it's Vista; I'm still on XP and plan to skip Vista for Win7.)
     
  8. Dyno

    Dyno Well-Known Member

    The one time I considered using Geek Squad, they told me they'd need to keep my laptop for 3 weeks minimum. I ended up being able to get it fixed elsewhere in much less time.
     
  9. OTD

    OTD Well-Known Member

    Can you just re-image it? Of course, you'd lose your data and any programs on it.
     
  10. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Yep, and that's what I think the issue is. I just bought an external hard drive last week -- and I moved all my files over to it last weekend. Since then, I've had the problem.

    I've uninstalled everything I could find related to the hard drive and done a system restore back to before I bought it.

    Don't want to wipe everything out, even though I've got everything I need backed up, but I can't find any other solution.
     
  11. Bob Crotchet

    Bob Crotchet Member

    Sounds much like a problem I had recently: A WD external drive would cause Windows to go haywire when connected via FireWire. Finally figured out that the culprit was a tiny little program that did nothing but show a custom icon for the drive. Somehow, that flummoxed Windows or the FireWire driver or whatever; and it was set up to autorun from the HD every time Windows booted. Reformatted the external drive, switched it to a USB connection, and it has worked fine since. ... Does yours boot without the external drive connected? Might give CCleaner (http://majorgeeks.com/download4191.html) or ASC (http://majorgeeks.com/Advanced_SystemCare_3_d5927.html) a shot at cleaning the registry if so.
     
  12. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    I'm only using the external drive (USB) for extra storage/backup, and Windows booted fine before I installed the drivers for it. Since I copied my files over, I haven't plugged it back in, either. Not sure if that's good or bad.

    I'll try one of those registry cleaners to see if that does the trick. Thanks.
     
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