Tweak my speculative shitbox

April 20, 2007 2:03 AM

SpeculativeUsedLaptopFilter: If I wanted a laptop that was relatively, in order of necessity, cheap, fast, running an OS with an efficient but possibly low-tech GUI, and light, what might my optimal setup be, in both hardware and software?

Basically what I'm saying is: I'd like to get a cheap (under $500?), relatively portable, used laptop I could use without drastically sacrificing speed of use from working with XP on a modern(ish) Pentium/1.5Ghz setup, and I'd be willing to change my OS and have less "range" with the computer to accomplish the basic needed tasks efficiently within the price range.

What I'd like to run on it, in order of necessity: text editor, basic word processing, web browser, image viewer, photo editing, MP3 player, basic sound editing (ie. Audacity).

I'm sure there's some sort of statistical or economic term for the point of balance between cheapness and efficiency I'm imagining. Don't know what it is, though.

I'm assuming the OS would likely be some variant of Linux - if so, please suggest flavours, bearing in mind I've no experience. (But maybe not... maybe a Pentium 1 with Windows 3.1? A random guess. I don't know.) Opinions?

posted by poweredbybeard to computers & internet (16 comments total)

I would go with a Pentium M (pre core duo). I run XP find on my Thinkpad X40 (P-M 1.2ghz). It also has a great battery life.

XP is fairly tweakable (classic theme, turn off services) and you won't need to switch OS's unless you really want to. Get enough ram and you are fine.
posted by mphuie at 2:35 AM on April 20, 2007

What if I wanted to go under $300?

Where does low cost stop being worth it?
posted by poweredbybeard at 2:43 AM on April 20, 2007

You could probably get someone to give you a Thinkpad 560x, but that's only a Pentium MMX 233 with 128MB of RAM. It worked fine for me for a long time, but these days I'd probably throw it out a second story window. (and it would have a good chance of surviving!)

Speaking to something more modern, I'd bet you could find something like a T30 for under $500, or maybe even a T40 for around $500. With luck, you could find one that's still under it's original 3 year warranty, which you could then use to have any problems fixed, or even extend it to 5 years for a couple hundred bucks. If you want small and light, you'll definitely give up some horsepower for that, but if you don't mind that, I'd take an X series.

If you can't tell, I'm very partial to IBM/Lenovo laptops. They last for freaking ever. My 560x, which is probably almost 10 years old now (I got it used in about 2000) works fine, although very slow, and obviously in need of a new battery. ;) I traveled with it for several years, too.

There are other decent manufacturers, I'm sure, but I've never seen any that are so well-designed for the used market, as in, they work forever and have awesome warranties. My boss refuses to buy one new, he always gets one from eBay just shy of being out of warranty and sends it to them to repair anything that's broken. I don't think he's ever spent more than $500 using that method, although since he tends to end up putting a bigger hard disk and more RAM in them, he may end up spending more than that in the end.

As far as OS is concerned, Linux will definitely get you more bang for the buck, but Windows XP will run fine on any 1GHz or greater CPU as long as you have enough RAM. Consider 512MB a bare minimum, and 768MB to 1GB to be vaguely comfortable. You'll probably have to upgrade a used laptop to that spec, but if you do your research properly, you'll be sure to buy one that makes disk replacement and memory upgrades easy. Unfortunately, I'm not at all up to date on which desktop Linux distributions are best for use with an older computer. I'd guess Debian or Slackware, but I don't really know, I'm more server-oriented these days.

The newer IBM/Lenovos (T20/T30/T4x) have one screw access to both the hard disk and at least one memory slot. If you get one more than a year or two old and you have the budget for it, replace the hard disk immediately, even if you send it in for service. You should be able to call Lenovo and get a set of installation disks sent out for $20 or so, if not free.

I like my T30 a lot, so that would be my first recommendation. They're well supported in Linux, so either way you go will work fine for you. You can buy one on eBay, and if you get the serial number from the seller before bidding, you can check its warranty status on the Lenovo website.

These days, you could probably find a new laptop for a little more than $500, but it's not anything I'd want to depend on, especially if you plan to take it anywhere.

On preview: mphuie's recommendation is a good one, although a T series will get you a faster CPU and bigger screen, but at a price of few more pounds. The X series are incredibly small, although the difference is much less with the 4x series units, as they've made the T series much thinner. The 40/41/42/43 will get you better battery life than the 30 due to the newer CPU they have that uses less power.
posted by wierdo at 2:47 AM on April 20, 2007

Check ebay. I see some Dell 12" centrino notebooks that are going for around $200-300 that are ending relatively soon.

This one is under $200 and only has a few hours left.
posted by mphuie at 2:48 AM on April 20, 2007

After looking on eBay, I'd say your best price/performance, at least with Thinkpads, is around the T30 or X30, which can be had for $300 to $400, depending on how long you want to wait to find a good deal. If you don't mind spending the extra $100, a T40 would be better battery-life wise.

For the love of all things good and right in the world, if you plan to move that laptop, do not buy a D600, you'd be better off buying a desktop. There is a reason they are so inexpensive. They are cheaply made. They're alright if you can be careful with them, and don't open and close them too much. (I hate plastic hinges)

That D600 is lower end than a decent T30, and only a hundred bucks cheaper.
posted by wierdo at 2:54 AM on April 20, 2007

On the software side, I would recommend Ubuntu Linux (http://www.ubuntu.com). It's dead simple to install and comes bundled with

text editors

OpenOffice (for word processing / spreadsheet / presentation software)

FireFox (for web browsing)

the GIMP (for image editing)

Audacity (for sound editing) (Actually, I'm not certain that Audacity is preinstalled, but I know that it can be installed very easily if it isn't.)

An MP3 player (although I'm not sure which one. Historically this has been Ubuntu's weak point, but the new version of Ubuntu that came out this weak fixes this, if I'm not mistaken. I haven't tried it yet.)

The last piece of software you said you needed was an image viewer. Google makes a Linux version of Picasa, which is a fantastic image viewer.

And since you're talking about using older hardware anyway, there should be very few driver issues, which should make the process of getting up and running really, really easy for you.
posted by JDHarper at 5:51 AM on April 20, 2007

Instead of Ubuntu, you might try Xubuntu--it's an Ubuntu variant that uses XFCE, a much lighter window manager, instead of Gnome. To quote the Xubuntu homepage, it is "ideal for old or low-end machines, thin-client networks, or for those who would like to get more performance out of their hardware."
posted by box at 6:15 AM on April 20, 2007

I've worked on Lenovo/IBM laptops professionally, and I really would recommend them. Maintenance dream, readily available spares, etc.

However, a caveat re: Ebay -- a friend of mine in college bought a T30 from a shady seller; the hard drive died a few weeks after she received it. I bought a new drive from NewEgg and installed it (which was really easy, see above), but then a few weeks later, the system board croaked, leaving her out $500-ish since she didn't want to pay for a new mainboard. I'm not sure if that particular machine was a lemon or what, but be aware that it can happen.

In terms of OS to run, you can either go with XP or a stripped-down 2k installation. I'd almost go with 2k because it's solid as a rock and simple, but I don't know what options there are for acquiring new 2k licenses at this point. If you're feeling adventurous and don't mind the learning curve, Ubuntu is also pretty sexy.

512mb RAM minimum for all this, by the way. If you can work it into your budget, upgrade to a gig. That'll do wonders for your response times for any speed processor.
posted by Alterscape at 6:28 AM on April 20, 2007

Personally, i dont know anyone thats bought a used laptop and been happy with it for much longer than a month, and then they have no warranty and prohibitively expensive spare parts.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 7:07 AM on April 20, 2007

You may want to check out refurbished laptops directly from IBM. I purchased one a couple years ago with similar criteria. Of course, it's underpowered by today's standards, but it got the job done and also came with a manufacturer's warranty like any new machine would.
posted by odinsdream at 7:12 AM on April 20, 2007

I got my T42 from IBM's refurb channel... before they sold the biz to Lenovo. Excellent piece of hardware, and the manufacturer's warranty was worth the extra $$$, because getting a laptop repaired is probably the most expensive part of buying one.

Second vote for using a Linux OS -- save money on the Microsoft tax, and the newer distributions (I'm looking at Ubuntu and Fedora Core 6) really have their act together.
posted by Mozai at 7:57 AM on April 20, 2007

Haven't played with it yet, but when I downloaded the new ubuntu yesterday I noticed a checkbox to get a version pre-tailored sepecifically for older hardware.
posted by contraption at 8:53 AM on April 20, 2007

I have a Latitude C400 (I got it second hand in 2002 for $1400 CDN). It's small, light, and both XP and linux plays well with it.
posted by porpoise at 10:57 AM on April 20, 2007

I'd say there isn't any really sharp bend in price/performance so far as I've seen from watching used/new laptop prices. Each successive $100 really does tend to get you something noticeably better (up to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1200 -- there does come a point where you start paying lots more for relatively little gain.)

Go with a Centrino system (or whatever AMD's power-efficient scheme is); get a warranty; try to get 512MB. I'll ditto Xubuntu as a good choice for the OS, but with 512MB and a Pentium M at 1 GHz, I'd bet you wouldn't notice Ubuntu with Gnome being any slower.

It's pretty amazing how overpowered modern systems are for what most people need most of the time. I've been running Ubuntu (without Gnome, with a lightweight window manager instead) on a 256M 800 MHz Pentium III laptop, and it's just fine with Emacs and Firefox at the same time -- both of them fat apps. All that said, photo and audio editing can be resource-intensive, depending on what you're doing.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 11:02 AM on April 20, 2007

The wonderful thing about the IBM/Lenovo machines is that you can further extend the warranty (up to a total of 5 years) as long as the machine isn't quite yet out of warranty, so if you get an almost 3 year old machine you can get an extra year or two if you want.
posted by wierdo at 2:45 PM on April 20, 2007

I bought a used 'off-lease' Compaq a year and a half ago. Geeks.com came in w/ the best price after considering shipping. I've been happy with it, and the price was reasonable.
posted by theora55 at 3:12 PM on April 20, 2007