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View Full Version : The great second-user laptop swindle


Shorty
4 Jul 2003, 5:55pm
YOU KNOW THE STORY, you're almost certainly the family computer expert. So whenever a friend needs a new computer, guess who gets asked? It's the same here. It came as no surprise a few weeks ago to be plied with a bottle of wine and asked to scout out a cheap laptop for someone. And there the odyssey begins.

Unless you want to be hip to the latest re-marketing attempts and call them notebooks, laptops are just laptops, right? You'd think the choice would be fairly simple, just find out what tasks it needs to perform and go from there. Except that this was for someone who couldn't afford much. It was almost certainly going to have to be a second-hand machine.

The requirements were simple enough: word processing, a good keyboard, decent battery life and reasonable screen. The first thing to do was the obvious one, a quick Google for "cheap laptops uk" seemed in order. Sure enough, not only a good selection of results but plenty of advertisers too. Poking around the stock of a few firms soon gave an idea of where things were headed.

Read the rest of this VERY interesting article at The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10320)

Geeky1
6 Jul 2003, 7:00am
Maybe I'm just mean, but if you're gonna pay for a P2-366 anything, let alone paying ~$700 for it, you deserve what you get.

Thrax
6 Jul 2003, 11:48am
Agreed.

Shorty
6 Jul 2003, 12:29pm
I also agree.

I just couldn't believe this article when I read it. That some people pay good money for articles so old.

maxanon
7 Jul 2003, 2:40pm
It happens when people don't really understand the technology or are too lazy to look around. Now that portables are outselling desktops:slashdot article (http://slashdot.org/articles/03/07/03/186258.shtml?tid=137&tid=184)

it's only a matter of time when the prices reflect that. When they can produce laptops with a little more room to upgrade (snap-in components), I think desktops may become a niche market.

WuGgaRoO
7 Jul 2003, 3:41pm
sumtimes....i have almost no hope for the human race..then i go to short media!!

Geeky1
8 Jul 2003, 5:20am
and loose what little hope you had left, right? :D ;D