Want To Buy: Laptop

Looking to replace a laptop that i burnt the harddrive out on. Apparently i used it too much and after a little over a year it got fried.
I just want something Basic, I only used it for STR/Myspace/Aim, listening to music and i like to attempt to edit pictures and videos.
I dont have much to spend, so show me what you've got.
I'd like to have a built in Camera, But i could live if it didnt have one.

 

IMac labtop Good Luck

 

why not spend $50 and replace the hard drive?

 

A new hardrive would be my first option. Whats you budget for a new laptop anyways?

 

I thoguht to replace the harddrive, my grandma said the poeple on the phone said it would be about $300 to get it back up and running :?:
I know nothing about laptops so i have no clue, my grandma just said the hard drive was toast.

 

$300 if you get it professionally done.
You need to get a friend who knows computers to help you.
Just open up the laptop, swap the drives, and reinstall windows and your applications. Should only take a few hours.

 

get it done professionaly done. its worth it. laptops are hard to work on, and if anything goes wrong then you konw you can take it back and get it fixed for free.

 

pm sent

 

I've changed plenty of laptop hard drives. Used to do tech support at cal state long beach. It's not too hard if you have the right tools. What laptop do you have?

 

I too would swap the hard drive. I have done it on a number of laptops. It is really easy -- but make sure first you have all of your laptop driver CD's available. It is simply a process of unscrewing the hard drive access cover on the bottom, unscrewing the drive, and lifting it out. You can get a fairly big drive these days for $50-$100. If you have a friend who knows how to do it, that would be best, not for the swapping drive part, but the reinstallation of windows part.

Amazon has a ton - just search "2.5 hard drive"

You may also want to think about spending $20 to get a laptop cooler. It is a little tablet-like device with a little fan that blows air onto the bottom of your laptop. I my experience, the number one cause of hard drive burn out is...well... overheating.

Cooler at Amazon

If you are set on a new laptop, you might consider a netbook. You can get them for sub-$300. They should do most of what you want to do. They are not as fast as a regular laptop (you won't want to use it for hard-core gaming), but they are smaller, lighter, and run battery power for longer. They don't come with an optical drive (CD/DVD), but for the $$ you would save over a laptop, you can afford a usb optical drive.

I just bought an ASUS netbook to replace my laptop. The MSI Wind was my second choice.

 

I go to www.newegg.com or www.mwave.com for computer parts.

 

Like others have said, if it's only a year old laptop, you can pick a 2.5" HD for pretty cheap. If you do have lots of music and images, might want to get one a little bigger or one with 7200rpm's. To physically swap out a hd on a laptop now-a-days is joke. Very simple and at most, you'll need a small headed philips screwdriver. Just make sure first if it's an IDE or SATA HD.
If your laptop came with a CD/DVD for a factory system restore, you'll be up and running quicker then you think. If it didn't, then you'll need to dig your OS CD/DVD, drivers and apps, if you have any. This part can be tricky for some people. Good luck!

 

Dude....check out craigslist. I own an ad agency and i supplied most of my equipment to my team with units bought through trusted CL sellers. I just recently picked up a beautiful Mac Powerbook 17" for 600. Put more memory into it for 30 bucks more and have a kickass laptop that runs CS4 and any design software i need.

You have to be careful on CL, but there are some good finds. I have also picked up decent PC laptops for my wife and daughter to use as well.

Just a suggestion. I know I love this powerbook and the G4 G5 towers I have bought...at a fraction of the cost.

ps

 

HDD, CD/DVD drives, memory, it's all fairly simple to change out. Just a couple of screws if any. It's also plug and play, so you really don't have to know much about computers to install any hardware on your laptop. Just make sure you have a boot up disc that normally comes with the laptop.

 

its an Older Dell laptop that was bought new christmas of 07
it worked great, but what happened is while i was online or whatever, the screen would randomly fade away to a white screen, but if i moved the screen at all it would usually come back.
then it got to the point where when i turned it on it would go white and stay white.
Eventually it woulddnt even turn on, and that what made them say it was the harddrive, but i have no clue

 

That sounds more of a video problem and a HDD. Either your screen or video card is dead. Do you hear the HDD during power up? Is the HDD light blinking or on during power up?

 

no lights were blinking or making sound when i try to start it up.
its literally dead, although its charged because we plugged it in to make sure that wasnt the problem.

 

That doesn't sound good. I have an 02 Dell and it still works to this day. Heavy as hell, but still works. I build my own computers and wouldn't mine taking a look at it for you if you're ever down in the O.C. No charge. You can always meet me at the trail head on Saturdays (usually O.C.) or I ride Sully Tuesday/Thursday around 11am.

 

i want to say i have a dell vostro?
something like that. its a block and its a tad heavy but it worked great.
maybe i'll take you up on that, it will give me a reason to come riede some OC trails

 

This doesn't really help your situation but I always recommend people buy from the business line of laptops from Dell or IBM. They aren't as shiny and pretty as the consumer models, but they are usually not much more expensive and are definitely built to last. I have a 3 year old IBM Thinkpad that's solid as a brick to this day, my brother has one from 2002 that's still cranking along.