hey guys, its about that time where yours truly has to upgrade his semi/mobile computing right and being (blissfully) ignorant doesn't excactly help the cause.

growing up i was a toshiba guy.. whether it was my first p300/1gb/100gb system or my later amd athlon x2 2100mhz 3gb/250gb deal i always found them to be nice products. however, the latter PC has the display thing actually integrated into the folding mechanism, so when yo'd have the screen stand up the weight of the display would pull back against the plastic, causing a disconnect between the plastic resulting in a ~1: gaping hole between the bottom w/the TOSHIBA logo and the screen, allowing such things as the red and white display wires (presumably from the CPU to the display) to be visible which was unnerving because you figure if they got damaged your display would go CAPUT.

aside from the design flaw, the coumputer itself was QUITE NICE and all of the best buy guys said that toshiba was ace and the way to go. my original 300mhz pentium laptop was also a very solid rock of PC without evensomuchas a single problem during its lifetime.

i got that last toshiba satellite L505-5965 for ~325 open box @ best buy, basically just under $400 with tax. for 2100mhz/3gb/ram 250gb hd space that was pimp and it got the job done, since mid-09 i've had the display casing come apart willed iwht duct tape and a 2ft fall knocked out the headphones/audio-out mic/audio-in slots go haywire, combining to need a new one. ideally, i'd like something in the ballpark of that because i never hit any technological./software snags and it worked exellently, even with a win7 upgrade...and ideally i'd like somehtingf in that 250-350 range so it's ~$400/w-tax.

does anyone have any ideas of where/how a man like myself can get a certain laptop? has toshiba been passed up by another manufacturer in terms of the quality-for-the-buck-range? is best-buy-open-box huntng on a certain day the best way to go? obv open boxes aren;t advertised, and seeing best buy / fry's ads show ~$500ish laptops with big specs but i'm more looking for something that was pimp in ~2008-2010 that stll has enough horsepower/space to run contemporary web/audio software good enough to be functional, as opposed to spending $500-700 to have a top of the line dealy-o?

so tl;dr i know i get it. if you lot were looking for a good laptop deal and wanted to try and do the proverbial open-box / 1-localtion-only sale where would you go nowadays? certaiiny, there has to be solid laptops similar to my 2100mhz/3gb-ram/250gb-HD in the $250-300 range, with or without open box deals...and my nice round # is $500, insomuchas with tax included i'd love to walk into somewhere, get my proper new/ish/to-me laptop, and head home with it via paying str8-cash-homey. if i can go to the ATM and get $500 and walk out with a laptop that allows me to use it as a music-defenestration-station then that's a win for me... and you lot are str8up better at life than me so odds are that you successful-@-life types are more prone to doing things like this than me, so therefore i reach out to you and say help a brother out! a few rounds are on me @ the next CSFMB non-bowling event if you can help me ut!

so-long and thanks for all the fish! tl;dr massive! also, i found ~13 xaxax in a cigarertte pack under my dresser so this took me ~20mins to write so i hope respect is due!

# james

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Few things to try.

- While there is always the risk that you will be bound, gagged and raped at the meetup, you can find people getting rid of their laptops on Craigslist. Here is someone that just posted one for $300 bucks. Its a Tosihba 16" satellite:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/sys/2890913407.html

I found you have to watch out for a few scams though. Make sure you get all the software that comes with it. Have them log in and make sure you can open things, etc. It is the most risky way to go, but I found some people think that once the battery is gone that the laptop is worthless. They are not that expensive to replace.

- ABT used to be a good way to get things cheap, but I know they have changed a lot in recent years. You need to find the right salesman. Sometimes they have a laptop that might be slightly damaged or has been on display.

- Microcenter I believe sells an off-brand. Might work out well.

- The Starbucks locations downtown are filled with idiots that leave their laptop out in the open. Just gotta be discrete, grab one and go. Also, if you go this route, can you grab me one?

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yeah i wasn't looking for as much of an e-bay/craigslist potential/scam dealy-o. what i was getting @ (in mu in/convenient 5000 word format) was that sometimes best buy is notorious for having "open box" sales where you can get a $400 laptop for like $329-349 where its practically a new machine that someone bought, opened, was like "fuck, i can't afford that, and then reutrns it" -- you save upwards of $50-100, get your basic warranties and all, and in the end catch a rather nice deal.

i have a background in computing... and while my adolescence helped me stray from 100% computerdorkdom (i.e. OMFG I CAN LEARN THE WIN32API AND USE MCISENDSTRING API CALLS TO OPERATE FASTER THAN STANDARD RUDIMENTARY SENDKEYS FUNCTIONS) i still like to think that i have a better-than-average clue of how things operate.

basically, i'd love something akin to my old craptop. dunno the monitor size (14" 15" 16") a rudimentary google shows it at 15.6" so thats fine for me. i'm not exactly going to be rendering the next pixar flick on it, nor am i looking to play doom6. basically, standard windows/web usage with a side of dencent audio soft/warez which has ye olde standard composite-out headphone slot which i can hook into a live mixer @ a bar/club/etc, seeing as my last 15.6" 2100mhz/3gb RAM/250gb HD craptop had the aforementioned design flaw in the display/folding mechanism that literally tears it apart, thus destroying any any all portability, and the mic-in/sound-out ports were fucked by an otherwise innocuous fall.

basically, i'd like am industry-standard run of the mill intel/athlon x2/x4 (DUAL/QUAD core or whatgever, aka, i'm pretty sure dual/quad core are buzzwords that mean the processors can handle multithreaded applications, i.e. it receives 2-4 sets of instructiions @ once, altho the software has to be specially coded for it) and as i said, i'd IDEALLY love to spend under $400 w/tax on it, but the most i'd go is $500 w/tax on it (seeing as if you buy a $500 comptuer, there's ~$50-60 of taxes to pay on it)

so i reach out to you success-having ppl... do you know any good spots where i can catch clearance/open-box deals on PCs who were brand-spanking-new circa 09-10 and are now considered older members of the product line where it's not too unfathomable to get a good deal on a PC that will do everything i need and thensome for $500-or-less with tax? best buy open boxes come to mind cuz my family has LONG been prone to finding those and getting basically-new PCs at a $100ish/+ discount and we get quality PCs that last forever, ranging from compaq to HP to toshiba. and i <3 toshiba laptops, but the design on my toshiba L505-S5965 laptop was so piss poor that after ~2 years of normal actual LAP-TOP usage the weight of the display started tearing the plastic casing apart and that sucks and while i'd gladly support toshiba again because the actual COMPUTER is nice as hell., if they stick with that flawed design it very well might turn me off.

so what makes/models/brands/stores are places to go a-huntin?

sorry about the tl-dr babblle, but in case ~2-3 ppl read this i want them to know EXACTLY where i'm coming from. i'mma go ouit and look within about a month (as i don';t wanna go out now find some OMFG deal and risk getting in credit hell) so i figured i'd toss it now in the hopes of getting some ideas.

otherwise, i'm a mighty man ,and i can and will do it own my own if i have to. peace!

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here's what not to buy: The HP G72-257CL. Piece of crap.

Check the Lenovo website. I've always wanted 1 of those and they seem to be running deals quite a bit. I too am a Toshiba fan.

that's too many. you should share those with the board.

hit microcenter's web site and they have 2 chicago locations, you can drill down to your preferred location and view all the open item/clearance/closeout merchandise at that location:

http://www.microcenter.com/

you can lock in the deal on-line and then go to the store and check out the merch and if you don't like it, don't buy it. They'll refund your account in 2 days.

I have to agree that, when it comes to PC laptops, there's Lenovo and then everybody else.

Among the everybody elses, I've had good luck with MSI--but then I use an externtal USB trackball and don't have to deal with their
sub-par trackpads.

Bought a Lenovo desktop for my woman's sister's kids for christmas that way and then had to take it back and get a laptop cuz somehow my offer to purchase her sister's kids a computer for their home-use got translated into buying her sister a laptop. Her sister puts her own facebooking and ebaying or whatever above her children's future job prospects. Maybe it's b/c they be black. Quality Lenovo desktop (4 gigs/750/dual core proc (amd tho)) for ~$275+ tax. MSI laptop with 4 gigs/500 hd/ dual core i5 was only $369+ tax.

For the people that have Toshiba and I do too, have you ever had a problem when you turn it on. I had an issue late last year that it looked like it got hit by a virus, got it fixed, basically had to make everything from the beggining.

Now sometimes when I turn it on, it's like it freezes on the opening screen that comes up, and if it does get past that, I get a message about exiting PXE.ROM.

I checked on Yahoo and it sounds like it's in the Hardware Drivers. I have had the computer for about 5 years, so I have got things out of it, don't know if I'll need a new one yet, still works, just wish when I turn it on, I won't have to restart about 5 times and sometimes takes a half hour to load or longer.

And too add, now my Battery isn't Charging my Computer.

For my battery problem, I looked at the cords and the Adapter cord wires are showing and got to see a Spark, so I just oredered another cable from their website, so I will have to wait for that before I can check the other stuff.

Thanks for the info.