Help me buy the cheapest functional computer possible

September 15, 2009 9:38 AM

Cheapest computing possibilities that will not die within six weeks? Used, new, whatever, I'm looking for something that will let me browse the net, do word processing/spreadsheets, and play music at least.

My computer died in February and living off of library and roommates' computers is getting a bit old.

The thing is that I have basically no money, so a replacement would have to be the cheapest damn thing possible ($500 or less). Hopefully without being a total pile of crap that dies in a month.

Minimal requirements:
1) Internet access (ideally allow lots of tabs open)
2) Word processing/spreadsheet work
3) Play music without crashing

This would be nice:
1) Play DVDs without crashing
2) Some hard drive capacity (I have two external hard drives so this is not crucial)
3) Not slow as balls if multiple things are running
4) Allows for simple photo editing/organization

I've heard suggestions of a netbook but don't have any idea of what would be a good one. Is there a way to evaluate used computers to make sure they don't suck? Should I be looking at anything else?

posted by schroedinger to technology (22 comments total)

For $500 you can get a pretty nice system from Lenovo Outlet.

Unfortunately their site went down for maintenance just now and so I can't pull up any prices. Just a few minutes ago I was looking at a ThinkPad R61 for $460.
posted by odinsdream at 9:44 AM on September 15

Dell and HP (and i'm assuming gateway) all have outlet/refurbished stores on their websites.

now-a-days any decent laptop with 1gb of memory or more will fulfill are your requirements.
posted by royalsong at 9:54 AM on September 15

Sites like slickdeals.net are always posting sub-$500 laptop deals. Check their "hot deals" forum.
posted by puritycontrol at 10:06 AM on September 15

And notebookreview.com has thorough reviews of different laptops.
posted by puritycontrol at 10:09 AM on September 15

Apparently, back in the day, BeOS could play ten videos simultaneously and still feel snappy---running on a 466MHz processor. So if you don't mind running alpha test release candidates, check out Haiku.

More seriously, I would advise you to wait for Windows 7 to release, because upgrading Windows in place is a real pain and 7 has lots of performance and annoyance patches.

You can skimp on RAM and buy it aftermarket (AskMeFi archives have a lot of recommendations on that) because upgrading RAM is literally "insert tab A into slot B". If you're asking this question, though, you probably will not trust yourself to upgrade the CPU; therefore, don't skimp on that.
posted by d. z. wang at 10:15 AM on September 15

3) Not slow as balls if multiple things are running

This is the tough one, but I think you can come in at $500 for a box kit computer. Every week check out the circulars for Staples, Walmart, and BestBuy. Then check out the websites for HP and Dell. After that go to New Egg and Tiger Direct to see if they have some crazy deal. I've bought probably a dozen computers for family members this way - you just have to catch that weekly special where they put together some odd combination.
posted by mrmojoflying at 10:18 AM on September 15

You will get more power for your money with a desktop vs. a laptop -- no contest. If you have the wherewithal, you can easily assemble a very nice desktop computer for less than $500 budgeting as follows:

Motherboard - $100
Processor - $100
Video Card - $75
Case - $30
Power Supply - $30
4GB RAM - $50
1 TB hard drive - $80
DVD-burner - $20

$500 -- can get you a VERY NICE machine these days. This also assumes you already have all the software you need on your current machine and can reinstall it on the new one.
posted by hamsterdam at 10:20 AM on September 15

In a similar situtation, I had to buy a cheap laptop for work, something that I could easily replace if it suffered a terminal industrial accident. I bought a Toshiba Satellite for under $500. It's been fine so far. I use it primarily for browsing the web, looking at online manuals, watching Hulu on my lunch breaks, and it even runs some pretty involved diagnostic software with no problems.
posted by Jon-o at 10:21 AM on September 15

there are always bargains on older Dells - turned off lease stuff.

If you're not already turned on to Ubuntu... for the bargain hunter it's really worth learning the ins and outs of a new operating system!

For maybe $150 you can find an old SC440 or SC400 Dell server (great old workhorses) on craigslist or such... there are $1 mice, keyboards, free monitors out there... or if you need em I'll post sites for the myriad $100 19" LCD's. Then if you need more storage for music/whatever... big drives are cheap.

Anyway... the Ubuntu install is really easy and painless, then Open Office is great! Open Office opens more versions of Word documents than any single version of Word does! It's pretty similar to Word.

Your call... If you wanna go with purely plug-n-play Windows alternatives...

Here's Dell's bargain locales:
Business PC's often better deals

Home PC's - often bundled w/software you don't need

the off lease stuff - best deals, esp if you're gonna add some memory, load Ubuntu, etc.

Laptops are just planned obsolescence... If you need to move the PC around, then you need one... otherwise, cheaper, upgradable, more "ports" separate components (broken keyboard? broken Drive? broken power supply? just replace it - whole thing isn't dead).

An Ubuntu system with 2gig memory that's 3 years old will smoke most newer Windows systems... there's nearly always free versions of everything being created for you by the Linux community... and if you really, really need to run a windows app... there's a site/community/software package called Wine that'll help you with that (run most newer apps "inside" of Ubuntu with all windows drivers in there, running as though it was running in a little Bill Gates Window squirrel cage/window).

Anyway.. something to consider. There are other distributions than ubuntu that have followings and easy to use install images (DVD, CD, USB - however you wanna download it and use it), but I've only had experience with setting up a couple PC's for kids/ entertainment at the elliptical machine using Ubuntu (never had any Linux experience before this).

btw, I don't "love" Dell, but they do have some of their product lines pretty well done... they do a good job with their low end servers that work Great as high end desktops! The motherboards tend to use decent bus speeds, conservative technologies that remain supported, decent quiet power supplies, etc (in my opinion/limited research anyway).
posted by Jiff_and_theChoosyMuthers at 10:25 AM on September 15 [1 favorite]

I have this netbook with Ubuntu on it. It will do all that you're asking except for DVDs--you'd have to buy an external DVD drive for that--and reliably, too. I find the F-stop photo software that comes with it a little clunky, but you can easily download picasa for linux and use that instead.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:42 AM on September 15

I bought my wife a P4 2.1 GHZ system off of Craig's list for $50. It came with a legit copy of XP too, which I promptly replaced with Ubuntu :) It has 512 RAM, DVD/CD burner, etc. It's a perfectly functional computer and she uses it every day for email and web without problems.
posted by COD at 11:01 AM on September 15

I have an Asus EEE 1000HE and it's the best and cheapest computer I've ever used. Does everything you want except play DVDs. You could buy an external drive to do that but really it's not the strong point. Great for web, runs microsoft office no problem. 120 gb hard drive is great for music. The sound is pretty quiet but I can run it through external speakers no problem. Great, great little computer, I got mine for under $400.
posted by sully75 at 11:37 AM on September 15

Overstock.com has lots of refurb laptops, many of which are under $400.
posted by Liver at 11:53 AM on September 15

Your question didn't rule out desktops. If you have a monitor, you can get a new Dell desktop for under $300, or with an LCD for under $500.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 1:15 PM on September 15

You can get cheap refurbished machine from geeks.com.
posted by fings at 1:18 PM on September 15

I just noticed a coupon at a site that may be of help also (Dell always has coupon deals going on somewhere)... worth checking fatwallet, dealhack, delio, et al.

30% off at Dell Lease site
posted by Jiff_and_theChoosyMuthers at 1:42 PM on September 15

For the same amount of money, a used desktop computer will blow a netbook or laptop out of the water in terms of performance, assuming your old system has left you with a monitor you can use.

Don't be afraid of buying an older system, if your needs are actually as stated in your post: My PIII-866Mhz at home, from 10 years back, is perfectly serviceable for e-mail, web browsing and light productivity apps. The requirements for a decent desktop experience peaked about 5 years ago , everything else has been bells and whistles or gamer-oriented since then¹.

Go for the best processor/motherboard combo you can get --- stay away from Celerons --- everything else will be easy to replace or upgrade. Disks in particular can always be moved to a newer system, so buying a new disk is never a waste of money.

Like the people above said, slap your favorite Linux flavor on your new system to save on costs for software licenses. As an added bonus, a properly configured install will need much less computing power than Windows: someone upthread mentioned 2 gigs of RAM --- this is a massive amount of memory for the tasks you need.

I would be wary of buying a used laptop: for one thing, you don't know what kind of abuse the battery has been through, you may find yourself needing to spend money for a new battery in a little while, after you have already invested your budget in buying the machine.

¹Standard lawn evacuation disclaimers apply.
posted by Dr Dracator at 2:22 PM on September 15

eBay currently has 149 refurbished Thinkpad laptops under $300. Will take a bit of computer knowledge to learn which will fit your needs. No need to mess with Linux (unless you want). Basic rule of thumb is if a laptop has 1 gigabyte of RAM in it, it's big enough (and modern enough) to run WinXP.
posted by Nelson at 2:49 PM on September 15

I know desktops would give me more bang for the buck, but I am kind of nervous about assembling my own desktop. I spent $800 on the computer that crashed and burned in February, and it was also custom-assembled (by friends, not myself, I'm a hardware idiot) and it died after only three years. I still don't really know what went wrong with it and it's left me wary of taking hardware into my own hands.
posted by schroedinger at 5:20 PM on September 15

dude... just use (or try to use) the crashed and burned PC with Ubuntu... it's all free... and if it works you've saved yourself some cash and maybe learned a new skill.

I'd mentioned some other options (building/ rehabbing a PC... and possibly adding memory etc... which is prolly overkill as mentioned above)... really, nearly any older PC and a downloaded image of Ubuntu will work for you. You'll have to roll up your sleeves and feel stupid for a little bit while you learn a little... but it's rewarding once done.

and did I mention it's all free!?

Try to use your old PC... as long as the CD works, you can drop the ISO image (once you learn how to do it at Ubutnu.com) with all free software, create the ISO image, run the "live CD" to install Ubuntu... boot up your old machine, drop in CD and watch it chug along.

There's a fair (or better than fair) chance it'll work ... you'll just need to borrow a friend's pc with a cd-r (and a blank cd) for a little bit.
posted by Jiff_and_theChoosyMuthers at 7:37 PM on September 15 [1 favorite]

The old computer was running Ubuntu.

I've been told I need to replace the hard drive and the power supply, at least. It's possible I need to replace more--I don't have the funds to buy a hard drive and power supply and find out I need to replace more components, much less the funds to pay someone to judge what else is wrong.
posted by schroedinger at 9:29 AM on September 16

aha... now it's becoming more clear.

Faulty hardware issues... yeah, I wouldn't try to troubleshoot that machine then. I thought you were referencing a general software meltdown.

There are plenty of options under $500 up thread for windows machines...

Still think that a working freeby or cheapy off of craigslist that is not a "home built special" but an older server or old high-end desktop/graphics station would be less likely to have hardware issues.

Then still go with the free software stuff... but anyway... there's lots of good advice in here now from different perspectives it seems.
posted by Jiff_and_theChoosyMuthers at 11:11 AM on September 16