Laptops for Cheap

A lot of different people are interested in getting a laptop for cheap. One example of this is with college students. They certainly have a need for a portable computer, but they often do not have the kind of money necessary to just walk into an electronics store and slap down the cash for one. Other people might want a laptop as well but cannot afford to spend big bucks on the purchase either. So we are looking at some different ways to get an inexpensive laptop that can still get some real work done. You can find all kinds of used laptops for sale on the internet.

Now obviously if money is no object you could simply go to your local electronics superstore and check out all of the nice new laptops and just buy whatever struck your fancy.  But because you are here reading this then obviously price is going to be the deciding factor, and you probably have a figure in your head for just how much you can spend.  In the past, 500 dollars was considered to be cheap for a laptop; in fact it was unheard of.  You pretty much had to spend a thousand dollars to get any machine at all.  These days that has changed quite a bit and now you have a few good options for getting a cheap machine.

Your first option in looking at different laptops for cheap will be to check out the netbooks in your local electronics stores.  Netbooks are a relatively new breed of laptop that are very small, very light, and very inexpensive.  They compromise on a lot of things, as they are not as fast as a larger laptop typically is, but they are pretty darn good for doing basic computing tasks including office applications, web surfing, and email. 

One of the biggest compromises that you have to deal with in regards to these cheap little machines is their size.  The 10 inch netbooks have a pretty cramped screen and the keyboard is usually about 90 percent of what a full keyboard is in terms of its size.  Before you buy such a tiny machine, you should definitely test it out in a store and do about five minutes or more of typing on it.  See if you can crank out a paragraph and be fairly comfortable with it.  You should be able to start slowly adjusting to the smaller size and get a decent rhythm going.  If you just cannot type at all on the thing then maybe netbooks are not right for you.  There are cheap alternatives that we will look at in a moment.  But if you find that you can type well on a netbook, then you should probably start looking around and comparing netbooks because for the price they pack a ton of value and you really can't beat them.

Now if you find that you just cannot get real work done on a netbook, then you should consider 2 basic alternatives: buying a used laptop, and buying a refurbished laptop. 

The used laptop is a pretty straightforward deal.  I would stick with either eBay or craigslist (only dealing in person if you use Craigslist of course).  The thing is that most of the programs we are using today still work great on hardware from a few years ago.  So it makes sense to look at a slightly used machine, especially if you go with a reliable brand.  For example, there are hundreds of used IBM Thinkpads on eBay that are very durable and will probably last for several more years of daily use.  Because they are a realiable brand, you should have a bit more confidence in buying one them used from eBay.  Plus, you can probably get a machine much cheaper this way then using any of the other methods I'm discussing here.  In other words, this is probably going to be the absolute cheapest option.

One more idea for a cheap laptop is to buy refurbished.  All of the major manufacturers seem to have a refurbished outlet store on their shopping websites these days, such as Dell, HP, Toshiba, and so on.  A simple search will bring up the discounted prices on these machines.  Generally they carry the same warranty as a new laptop, so you should check that out and feel safe and confident when you make your purchase.  Another great tip for buying refurbished is to wait for the sale.  Particularly with Dell, they always have a sale on their refurbished laptops every few weeks or so, and usually throw in free shipping to boot.  So if you figure out what you want then you might just eyeball it for a while and wait for the sale to come up.  This insures that you will get the best price possible on the machine.