What are the minimum requirements I should look for contained by buying a used laptop?

I am a college student, and I obligation it for mainly for conservatory BUT I would also like to use it to surf the net and maybe download music and burn cds.

Answer:
These days, you can bring very clothed new laptops for the 499 - 600 dollar variety. I'm not sure I would recommend buying a used laptop at all.

However, if you do buy a used laptop... Get the fastest processor you can find for the price span you're looking at. I wouldn't recommend going down to a pentium III for instance. Stick with pentium 4, pentium M or better. For AMD run with an athlon 64 or turion.

Make undisputed the laptop has satisfactory memory. This is where used laptops almost other fall short. Try for at smallest 512mb RAM.

You'll probably want to have a wifi card surrounded by the laptop, being a student. If it doesn't enjoy one built in, you'll enjoy to plunk down more money to buy an external device, so consider that when looking at price.

If you're not doing any gaming, you won't have to verbs too much about the video card.

For a rock-hard drive... it depends on how much space you think you'll want. Used, I wouldn't go below 40gig.

Still, I outstandingly recommend looking into low cost new laptops. Used laptops can own a LOT of problems.
3.4GHz Pentium 4 650 w/ HT Technology, 1GB DDR2, 100GB, DVD?RW
make sure it have at-least 512MB ram
Well, you are going to own to tell us what you are going to university for.

Just saying you are using it for academy does not tell us anything.

You could be going for clear design, Architectural design, computer programming or any other career that requires a briskly computer and we wouldn't know.
Minimum requirements to burn a cd...
would be a Cd-rom with CD-R capability.

...other than that...
the standard Specs that laptops in our day comes out with, should be more than satisfactory for school work and surfing the net.
Hard-drive size (if you are downloading music...the larger the harddrive the better)

Processor (intel is usually best, dual-core is the new thing) - bigger the better, compare the used model to what is person sold new

USB ports (you'll unquestionably need them)

Wireless (really advantageous for using free library internet etc. while studying or surfing)

ability to run Windows XP (Vista is nice but so modern there are bound to be bugs...so if you can run XP, adjectives your software should work)
lets see, I'd want a widescreen, preferably a 12.1 or a 14.1 inch.
I'd want USB 2.0, a minimum of 1280x768 (wxga) blind resolution.
wireless b/g, 1 gig of bump, a mobile processor of 1.2 ghz or higher.
minimum 40 see hard drive. cd is open, I can always plug contained by a usb 2.0 cdrw or dvdrw
Here's what you should look for (if looking for a Windows laptop):

- 512 MB-1 GB RAM
- 80-180 GB HD
- 1.5 Ghz-3.0 Ghz Intel processor
- 128 MB VRAM- 512 MB VRAM
- CD-RW/DVD-RW (24x/8x speed) disc drive (you can have an suggested floppy)
- Windows 2000/XP/Vista packaged and/or installed
-14" LCD blind
-WIFI card
- Wireless mouse

If you're looking into Macs, however, try these models:
-iBook G4 12"
- iBook G4 14"
- Macbook w/ 2 GB RAM, 120GB HD, wireless Mighty Mouse (you should wait until Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard comes out back buying this, though.)

Personally, I would go next to the Macbook.

Good luck.
Check out this link and see for yourself.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/cat...

I hold a Dell XPS M1710 that I've had for give or take a few 3yrs. I play games and do work on it. It was probably the best investment I made contained by Electronics. I would definitley look into buying New & not used you will never regret going spanking new but if you buy someone's headache you will kick yourself for in your favour a couple of bucks.You also have the risk for a warranty with a foreign Pc but not so with used Pc's. These are probably the most affordable andd flexible Pc's around. Even if you don't buy one of these at least you will own more knowledge as to what to query for and how to compare products. I have Three Pc's that I hold bought over a twelve year period.

Hope it help.

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