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Friday, 31 December 2010 12:36 |
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Second hands laptops are the best choice when you are looking for cheap laptops. But since these computers are already used, you can expect there a few surprises as well as shockers. First of all, let's talk about hardware issues in second hand laptops. The weakest part in laptops is their hard disk. Despite being designed for 250,000 on/off cycles and lifespan being generally long, they tend to develop faults quickly where laptops are concerned. Usually they are sold with 2 or 3 years warranty, but second hand laptops are usually more than 3 years old and hence they are out of their warranty period.
The other fault developing factor with laptops is their motherboard. This is a very complex electronic device assembled on a multiple layer printed circuit board (PCB). Electronic components usually are very taffy and can survive in low as well as very high temperatures. But in laptops, motherboards have thousands of small electronic components assembled on them, due to which the probability of a fault with any one of them increases.
Where to Get Second Hand Laptops?
One of really good sources is eBay. However, eBay purchases can sometimes be tricky because you cannot predict what you will really get. You don’t get to see your laptop before; all you can see it its description and some photos.
What to Look for First When You Get Your Second Hand Laptop?
The first thing is to check laptop memory RAM with Memtest. This software is available for free and can be downloaded from here.
After you test your RAM and are a hundred percent sure that it is working properly, the second step is to test your hard drive. The hard drive can be tested with many applications. The default hard disk Scandisk which you get bundled with Windows doesn’t actually show hard disk surface scan results and doesn’t indicate the presence of any bad sectors if present. However, you need to find an application that can show you if there are any bad sectors located on your hard disk.
Second hand laptops also can be bought from online classified ads and through newspaper classifieds that occur in some publications. Some examples of such newspapers are Loot in the UK and locate state classified papers if you are in the US.
Buying from adverts in newspapers is a better idea because then you can go and take a look at the laptop before you decide to buy it. This is not possible on online sources like eBay, where you can only see the pictures of the laptops and wouldn’t know what their exact condition is.
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Last Updated on Sunday, 27 November 2011 11:15 |
Laptop Review 
