Thread: Carputer Laptop - New or Used ??

ive got a thinkpad t41 coming in soon that may suit your needs. i ended up getting two thinkpads, an r50 and a t41 from ebay, and obviously only need one. i am leaning towards keeping the r50 cuz its cheaper and selling the t41, so if you are interested, just PM me with what u are looking for and i can see if it would suit your needs.

Keep your eye out at bestbuy. They are 99% rebate free, which means they negotiated for instant rebates in their stores. Similar to Walmart, they carry a lot of weight and get what they want.

BestBuy $399 laptop normally $599

* Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core processor T2310 with 533MHz frontside bus, 1MB L2 cache and 1.46GHz processor speed
* 1GB DDR2 memory for multitasking power
* Multiformat DVD±RW/CD-RW drive with double-layer support records up to 8.5GB of data or 4 hours of video using compatible media

They almost every other week have a $399 laptop on sale. Compaq, Toshiba, HP, Acer. All are normally $599 or $649, with $200-250 in instant rebate.

Originally Posted by Phatsacks

They almost every other week have a $399 laptop on sale. Compaq, Toshiba, HP, Acer. All are normally $599 or $649, with $200-250 in instant rebate.

That is cool, but they won't ship to Canada... Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Well...

They have BestBuy's in Canada too. You can also use it as a price metric for Future Shop (I think that's what it's called?)

IMO any new laptop u get is gonna be overkill. i used a p4 and just upgraded to a PM, and both are plenty fast for our needs. ur just gonna be running one program on it doing one thing at a time usually, and i even used a pIII before and it was tolerable. buying a new system and then cracking it open to solder the power connections will void your warranty anways, so getting a year or two old thinkpad or toshiba will save u tons. i got a damn good system for about 250

Originally Posted by Phatsacks

Well... They have BestBuy's in Canada too. You can also use it as a price metric for Future Shop (I think that's what it's called?)

Yeah we do, however even though the $CAD is around par with the U.S they just don't bring in the deals Best buy in the U.S has. The cheapest laptop you can get before (X-Mas) is $599

http://www.bestbuy.ca/marketing/lapd...gon=&langid=EN

As for Future shop (yes that's the name) they are owned buy the same company to my knowledge and they are not better...$499 is the best price for an Acer or $549 for a refurbished Compaq

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/cla...=EN&catid=1002

13.5% Taxes on top !!!

Originally Posted by hari-bhari

IMO any new laptop u get is gonna be overkill.

Agreed hari-bhari, An old Thinkpad for $300 would do the work for the Carputer. The decision between old and new is more towards having a modern all around laptop (home, work) and use the same laptop with all you data in the car
As for the ON feature - I plan to have a docking station if I get a business laptop like the Thinkpad X series (my favorite so far).

A new Thinkpad I had my eyes on is the newer [HL]Z61m[/HL] which goes on eBay for around $450-500 if you catch it on time.

http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...=ThinkPad+Z61m

i would highly consider getting two different laptops. number 1 reasons is that its gonna be a PITA to dock and undock that thing everytime, not to mention any issues you have with needing it rebooted or something before you dock it to get your devices working (i dont know exactly, but i can almost guarantee that some driver somewhere won't be happy, namely the TS). also, the other thing u want to consider is why put a nice shiny new laptop in the car and subject it to all the jostles and bumps and heat of your automotive environment? I know laptop drives are durable, but what about if the hard drive fails or it gets stolen...poof, all your important data is gone. And finally, with a carputer, you can use a slower machine because you only have one thing running, but if you are using the same one for both, you will have all this other stuff and all these files for your other needs and getting a carputer set up how you want is not just a one time plug and chug thing. Most users end up going through several different types of software, several reinstallations and reformats, are you sure you want to be doing that with your main computer? If I were you, I would spend about 200 on a decent used laptop for the car and 500 for a new pc for home use. You won't find many users around that use one machine for both tasks, and there is good reason for that...

Originally Posted by hari-bhari

i would highly consider getting two different laptops...

Well my friend, your answer is one of the reasons I made this post
You have made a couple of good points right there and I would probably reconsider the ONE laptop concept.

Thank you.

Now remains the task of finding the perfect laptop Carputer for me............
See you all in a month or two LOL..........

Originally Posted by Mister1

Well my friend, your answer is one of the reasons I made this post
You have made a couple of good points right there and I would probably reconsider the ONE laptop concept.

Thank you.

Now remains the task of finding the perfect laptop Carputer for me............
See you all in a month or two LOL..........

haha i dont see how i helped since ur doing the opposite, but good luck to ya!