Broke Laptop, repair or buy new?

sorry for the double post...

 

Thanks I might do that later, I'm on my phone right now.

 

I would buy new and slave the old hard drive to retrieve your pictures as suggested earlier.
I bought a decent laptop for my mom at Wal Mart for $249. Its not a gamer but can do the internet, skype, all the basics, pictures etc. I use it a lot when I visit her and am actually on it right now. For the price it was surprising a nice unit.

 

Hmmm. Older PC's used to display error codes through the blinks. Like three blinks meant bad memory sticks. If it's failing the post, you have bigger issues. Could be bad memory, CPU, motherboard, etc.

 

5 year old laptop? usually better to just buy a new one, go for either a lenovo or mac

 

K Thanks, I'm lookin to stay on the 350 range the only thing on there will be my music and pics, other than that just need one for trolling the web and maybe skype.

What about these samsung laptops I've seen?

 

Walmart has one (HP I think) on the black Friday ad for $248 that looks pretty decent.

 

x2, if i could afford a mac, my truck would be fixed, and i still wouldnt be able to afford one.

are the toshiba laptops any good? ive seen then for about 248 and look pretty decent.

 

yeah i thought about that, but for not much more i can get a bigger screen, so i think ill go with that.

 

i use my disk drive sometimes...well i did, i have a cd with pics on it from hoots...but said cd is also mia

 

For the price you can get a good laptop these days and with yours being 5 years old I'd definitely just pick up a new one.

I never use the disc drive on my laptop. I actually just sold my 4 year old Toshiba to a co-worker and am replacing it with an Asus Zenbook. Little bit smaller screen, but I wanted something thin and light for more portability since I'm usually on my desktop.

There's definitely some good stuff out there for under 500 bucks though.

 

$350 won't get you much. Except for maybe in the Netbooks. Many of the laptops that are on sale cheap for black friday are usually the bottom of the model lines. Older single core processors, low ram, crappy displays, etc. Sure, you say you're only going to use it for pics, music, web surfing, etc. Look at it this way. Would you buy a 5-lug regular cab tacoma? Only if you are using it for residential driving or to the market and back? Eventually you're going to want to haul something or carry more than one passenger or maybe even do a little off-roading. Everyone thinks they only use their PC for one thing at a time. Fact is, your PC is doing 50x the amount of work you think it is. Surfing the web alone is not a single action. Several programs are working to get you here. It's a group effort.

A decent laptop will run you about $500 easily. Spend the money on the processor and memory. Ignore the frivolous stuff like blue ray drives, over-sized hard drives and unnecessary software. If you need more drive space, buy an external USB hard drive so you're not in this same boat 5 years from now. As for brands: Lenovos are good, but pricey. Dells are hit or miss. Usually more hit than miss though. I've only seen a few models that were poor designs. Acer and Asus are good bargain brands. Stay away from HP. In my experience, they are like GM. Great at first, then crap down the road.

BTW, my 8 year old laptop is an IBM ThinkPad. Previous one was a Dell 5160. That one lasted 7 years.

 

You should be able to recover them as long as the hard drive isn't dead. I'd look into buying a cheap USB enclosure for a 2.5" drive. Take the drive out of the laptop, put it in the enclosure. Attach it to your new computer and browse it for what you need.

 

go balls out....

 

What he said is great advice.

Lenovos are good - not as good as they used to be but still very good. I can carry my Lenovo open by one edge and it still feels like it's made of billet. They don't look as "sharp" as an HP off the lot, but after a couple years they begin holding up a LOT better than HP and the other brands.

Dell and Toshiba seem like similar quality IMHO.

I'd keep writing, but he already wrote is spot-on.

 

This is something you would see from most any laptop. Best practice of course would be to always allow a unobstructed flow of air. I think my brand new laptop would do the same if the fan was not exposed.

 

well i never suffocated it, im talking it had to be completely exposed, i used to prop it up on a book, so air could flow better, it eventually got to where it didnt like that and you had to hold it sideways so it was completly unobstructed.

like i said i dont need anything fancy, i have other computers for this, so yeah its gonna be my 5 lug single cab i drive around the neighborhood, i have my ex cab 4x4 for the hauling, passangers, and wheeling. which would be our other computer. best buy has a samsung on sale for 299 as a door buster, so im going to brave the crazies...first and most likely last time i will ever do this.

thanks for the replies and suggestions, but im not really wanting to go over 300 for it, i have better things to spend my money on

 

As stated earlier it probably isn't worth dumping money into a 5 year old Compaq. Buy as much computer that you can afford though. Figure out how much you want to spend and fit as much performance into your budget.

Aim for processor performance, RAM and graphics. You can usually find a machine with a really powerful AMD processor cheaper than an equally equipped Intel unit.

 

Late to this party I think...but search Tigerdirect.com and compusa.com...Same company now. Also, I'd consider getting a netbook or whatever they're called. Much cheaper (under $300).

 

true i looked into those found an 11.6" hp for 299, then found out i could get a 15.6" samsung...better specs too for 299