Looking for a laptop...

Flame retarded · Post by **Flame retarded** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:17 pm

just something I can write my book on, stay connected while living on the open road,wifi able,music storage,good for pics and film.
I recently lost everything I had,home household family and all..i wish to write about the experiance,the recovery and the fantastic moments of open heartedness,goodness,rediculousness and beauty Ive incountered .
Besides this i am working on site on the playa to write and film a cronicle of Burningman, its storys and citizens.

Im on a limited budget and I have some cash , could barter,borrow,however possible to collect,compile and compose some actual art from the ruins of this situation into something significant,on a wonderful tool called a lap top.
I feel like a chump for asking, but if anybody answers to this, Ill swoon.
Im so cut off, I live in a travel trailer and im isolated.
enough waaaaaH!
hit my email
[email protected]
thank you
Alchemy

kman · Post by **kman** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:21 pm

Is a $200 netbook more than your budget will bear? I see them for sale all the time. Decent sized hard drives, batteries last a loooong time, very portable. As long as you don't need a lot of speed and are ok with a small screen, they do quite nicely.

Token · Post by **Token** » Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:26 pm

You could go old school and write with a pencil on paper.

A smartphone could do the rest.

teardropper · Post by **teardropper** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 3:33 pm

We use Macs, but recently needed a PC to link up to a work PC and found a fully featured Toshiba laptop with a 15.6" screen for under $400. It's been 3 or 4 months and it operates fine, but it is only used for the internet and on very selected sites. However. it is fast enough and has enough hard drive to operate most programs. Maybe that's more than your budget will allow. Or are you looking for a free one?

bm_cricket · Post by **bm_cricket** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:11 pm

If you will be living on the road then make regular backups.. Laptops hate being bumped around.

Don't buy an HP/Compaq laptop unless you are willing to replace it every year (just after the warranty runs out).

Personally for what you are doing I suggest the "netbook" route. Most big consumer stores sell them in the $300-$400 range and they have all the normal features of a computer. Install OpenOffice (free option similar to Microsoft Office) and you will be fine. But expect a laptop to have 1) a dead hard drive, 2) mysterious dead motherboard, or 3) a cracked screen. In the second and third scenarios you will not want to replace it due to the cost. In the first one you'll loose all your data if you don't have backups.

Brands to avoid under any circumstances: HP/Compaq/Sony for consumer level systems. Someone should firebomb their quality control facilities. Morons. Brands to only buy if you are willing to accept a dead (and financially stupid system to repair) in the 1-2 year range: Toshiba/Dell. Anything else should be cheap enough that if it dies you aren't too upset about it.

PS, when I'm not playing a Burner or a student my day job has been PC/Network tech. That's been the story for ~10 years now. If you are buying a used laptop don't pay more than $150 for it no matter how good it sounds. Apples may be the exception but still, don't pay anything even close to retail for a mac. Macs have a stupidly high resale value but their value is hugely inflated for what they are.

Ways to keep your laptop alive in a car: Never let it get hot. Never let it run where the vents/fans can't breath. Never use it on a blanket (the bottom will get hot and the motherboard will die). Only give it clean power. There are lots of people on this forum with opinions on what that means. personally, just be careful about what you plug it into. If your alternator in your car is going out and you have a $12 power inverter for your car you probably don't want to run it from your car....

Good luck on the book.

And again, boycott HP/Compaq/Sony laptops.

Oh, in short, get a cheap netbook. Don't let it get dirty/dusty. Make regular backups to a flash drive. (Cheap means less than $400). Used could possibly go as high as $200 but please, don't pay more than that for a used computer. eBayers computer dealers are scammers.

Post by **AntiM** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:34 pm

MyLarry has an old Gateway display model from Best Buy in his semi. Plugged into an inverter off the truck 12V. It sits in a bracket which holds it open and steady, and so the GPS shows on the giant screen and talks to him to keep him company. We got it under warranty and eventually had everything replaced over several years. Beat the hell out of it, cook it, freeze it, get it gritty and greasy as hell, it is still holding up.

bm_cricket · Post by **bm_cricket** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 6:59 pm

AntiM wrote:MyLarry has an old Gateway display model from Best Buy in his semi. Plugged into an inverter off the truck 12V. It sits in a bracket which holds it open and steady, and so the GPS shows on the giant screen and talks to him to keep him company. We got it under warranty and eventually had everything replaced over several years. Beat the hell out of it, cook it, freeze it, get it gritty and greasy as hell, it is still holding up.

I'm glad it works.. Heat, shock/vibration, and bad power are all very very bad for any computer. I assume that the bracket reduces the shock and the heat. As for the poor power, maybe the inverter is good? Either way.. I'm glad it works. YMMV.

kman · Post by **kman** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 9:56 pm

bm_cricket wrote:If you will be living on the road then make regular backups.. Laptops hate being bumped around.

Don't buy an HP/Compaq laptop unless you are willing to replace it every year (just after the warranty runs out).

Personally for what you are doing I suggest the "netbook" route. Most big consumer stores sell them in the $300-$400 range and they have all the normal features of a computer. Install OpenOffice (free option similar to Microsoft Office) and you will be fine. But expect a laptop to have 1) a dead hard drive, 2) mysterious dead motherboard, or 3) a cracked screen. In the second and third scenarios you will not want to replace it due to the cost. In the first one you'll loose all your data if you don't have backups.

Brands to avoid under any circumstances: HP/Compaq/Sony for consumer level systems. Someone should firebomb their quality control facilities. Morons. Brands to only buy if you are willing to accept a dead (and financially stupid system to repair) in the 1-2 year range: Toshiba/Dell. Anything else should be cheap enough that if it dies you aren't too upset about it.

PS, when I'm not playing a Burner or a student my day job has been PC/Network tech. That's been the story for ~10 years now. If you are buying a used laptop don't pay more than $150 for it no matter how good it sounds. Apples may be the exception but still, don't pay anything even close to retail for a mac. Macs have a stupidly high resale value but their value is hugely inflated for what they are.

Ways to keep your laptop alive in a car: Never let it get hot. Never let it run where the vents/fans can't breath. Never use it on a blanket (the bottom will get hot and the motherboard will die). Only give it clean power. There are lots of people on this forum with opinions on what that means. personally, just be careful about what you plug it into. If your alternator in your car is going out and you have a $12 power inverter for your car you probably don't want to run it from your car....

Good luck on the book.

And again, boycott HP/Compaq/Sony laptops.

Oh, in short, get a cheap netbook. Don't let it get dirty/dusty. Make regular backups to a flash drive. (Cheap means less than $400). Used could possibly go as high as $200 but please, don't pay more than that for a used computer. eBayers computer dealers are scammers.

Well said, and I concur completely.

The one thing I would add, for someone running their laptop in an auto full-time, is it's well-worth the money to pop for an automobile adapter so you can run direct off of 12v DC (your car/RV battery) rather than wasting power going though an inverter (and possibly damaging your laptops electronics if it's a cheap inverter and not a decent sine wave inverter, especially with long term use). They're not necessarily expensive.

CapSmashy · Post by **CapSmashy** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 5:01 am

I have an old Dell laptop that is pushing 4 years old and I have abused the hell out of it. The only fixing I have had to do is replace the battery pack. Its made 3 trips to Burning Man, has traveled the world, has been run on very unstable power sources from my $15 inverter off the truck battery to plugging straight into a cheap Chinese genset. I've had it hot enough to cook eggs on from not enough ventilation or clogged vent ports.

With how I treat it, I have been expecting its death to occur any day I turn it on for the past 2 years.

bm_cricket · Post by **bm_cricket** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:41 am

CapSmashy wrote:I have an old Dell laptop that is pushing 4 years old and I have abused the hell out of it. The only fixing I have had to do is replace the battery pack. Its made 3 trips to Burning Man, has traveled the world, has been run on very unstable power sources from my $15 inverter off the truck battery to plugging straight into a cheap Chinese genset. I've had it hot enough to cook eggs on from not enough ventilation or clogged vent ports.

With how I treat it, I have been expecting its death to occur any day I turn it on for the past 2 years.

I've had pretty good success with most Dell/Apple/Toshiba/IBM laptops that are targeted to the business level. Dell Latitude systems last a long time, Dell Inspiron systems last about two years, Dell XPS systems don't usually make it more than 3 days past the basic warranty. But the systems marketed to business customers usually aren't as glitzy but last a lot longer.