Okay... so my uncle sent a laptop back with my old man to see if I could work a little data-recovery magic on it...

Sadly, it's so far gone I wasn't able to save it (had to buy an adapter and everything)...

Uncle says to keep the HDD 'cause he needs it one way or another (professional data recovery from shot drives) and I can keep his old laptop.

Now then... for 80 bucks I can throw a hard-drive in. Also have to throw in a battery.

It's a 500Mhz Celeron. I'm thinking it'd be fun for light gaming, and if I throw in a new battery I could go mobile...

Still, do I wanna put 250 to 300 bucks (battery+HDD) towards a POS laptop that may or may not play DVDs... or should I just buy a halfway decent one later. 300 bucks for a working laptop is nothin' to sneeze at, but I'm still debating if it's worth it.

Quote: Originally Posted by Darksamurai Okay... so my uncle sent a laptop back with my old man to see if I could work a little data-recovery magic on it... Sadly, it's so far gone I wasn't able to save it (had to buy an adapter and everything)... Uncle says to keep the HDD 'cause he needs it one way or another (professional data recovery from shot drives) and I can keep his old laptop. Now then... for 80 bucks I can throw a hard-drive in. Also have to throw in a battery. It's a 500Mhz Celeron. I'm thinking it'd be fun for light gaming, and if I throw in a new battery I could go mobile... Still, do I wanna put 250 to 300 bucks (battery+HDD) towards a POS laptop that may or may not play DVDs... or should I just buy a halfway decent one later. 300 bucks for a working laptop is nothin' to sneeze at, but I'm still debating if it's worth it.

Toss a hard drive in it and skip the battery till you can put it through the paces - if it will do what you need then pop for the battery. Used laptops are outrageous so if that one works well its worth a battery and a HD.

If you buy a HD and the laptop sucks then snatch the drive out, stick it in a slim 2.5" enclosure and have a hella nice portable drive.

Either way its win - win

My vote goes toward selling it and buying a better laptop.

I say hack an external battery. It's fun, and you can get outrageous run-time, if you scavenge the right ones.

Car-Puter!!!! buy a cheap inverter and your off, DVD, GPS, MP3 in car, blah, blah, blah.

Seriously, I agree with aaronkelly, if it doesn't pan out, you can buy 2.5" USB 2.0 enclosure at compUSA for $20

Toss it or sell it whatever you may choose! But you could easily do better than that....there is 750mhz toshiba's at that price or lower on ebay among many others! Dude part it out and sell it or keep it and see what you can salvage! Theses my 2 cents bro!!

Hmmm... the alarm system I'm gonna put in my car can attach to a laptop... Also, a lot of the new chips can be interfaced by laptop...

Might be worth it.

dude save another 300 for a brand new dell. It would spank that one around

maybe someone has an old laptop drive they could send you, I've got a 2gb, not worth much of anything size-wise though... In a few months I plan to pull my 4800rpm 80gb drive and put a 7200rpm when they finally are released. I'd have to charge for the 80gb though and it would be like January...

But if you re-imburse me for shipping the 2gb is yours if you just need to see if the system will boot and take an OS.

Dude 300bones would get you into A64

Quote: Originally Posted by Peng Lord maybe someone has an old laptop drive they could send you, I've got a 2gb, not worth much of anything size-wise though... In a few months I plan to pull my 4800rpm 80gb drive and put a 7200rpm when they finally are released. I'd have to charge for the 80gb though and it would be like January... But if you re-imburse me for shipping the 2gb is yours if you just need to see if the system will boot and take an OS.

I'd need at least a 20 (mostly for the fact I'd have to load it down with some Simpsons eps and MP3s... but thanks for the offer dude.

my 790mhz p3 will barly run q3... it has 256mb o' ram and a 4mb fx card. it wont make it thru a dvd, but it will play anime and cartons(futurama simpsons ect)

i really doubt a 500 celly will work well...

That's the point of a carputer, play video (even TV using a USB TV Tuner), wardriving, music, etc. The purpose is not to be an extremely powerful gaming system.

im just tryign to say that my
BARLY runs q3 and is nearly 2x as powerfull(once u take into consideration its a celly it is)

Litter more money and you could have a run-of-the-mill regular computer, i say buy new one..