So I get a call from my brother today... evidently my nephew's bookbag was stolen yesterday, not only were all of his school books in there (two and a half weeks in to school, mind you) but also the laptop my parents, the wife, and I bought for him two years ago when he started highschool.

My brother and his wife do not have a lot of money and are now responsible for replacing the books. Now, we really wouldn't want to help pay for a brand new machine until he goes off to college and we're just looking for something basic to fill the need for now. I figured I would just throw it out here before I start scouring ebay for one, especially since that route always tends to be a crap-shoot.

It doesn't need to be anything fancy... an older PowerBook or iBook would be ideal but I know the chances of that are probably next to zilch... at the very least I'd like it to be able to comfortably run XP.

Since we don't have kids of our own, we tend to take the education of our sibling's children pretty seriously and we like to help provide for them in that area as much as possible. I know my nephew in particular has benefited greatly from having a personal laptop to do all of his assignments and related research with. Since starting high-school with one his grades have gone up a good deal compared to when he was in middle-school. Evidently he's quite shaken from having it stolen. When he started highschool that if he worked hard and kept his grades up that we would help him pay for college and we want to give him every opportunity to keep up the progress that he's made.

But we really don't want to drop another several hundred bills on a new machine while he's still in highschool, especially if there's a chance something like this could happen again.

So if anyone has an older laptop that they wouldn't mind getting rid of on the cheap please PM me... we'd more than appreciate any help!

Hmm, you just missed out. I let go of a PIII with bad RAM and a bad HD. I gave it to my brother.

Same from me, just sold a Pentium 3 with no power supply. Good luck with the hunt, and you might try your local craigslist.

I think Scott will give you his. He's got a lot of incriminating evidence on it anyway.

I have a Compaq Presario 13" PIII, 650MHz, Windows 2K Pro with 64mb of Ram and a 6GB harddrive. I just put it in the closet when I got my new Powerbook. Only problem is the power supply got yanked out by accident and broke the little nub inside. Consequently, you cant plug it in or charge it, but I'm told it's about a $50-100 fix. It's from about the year 2000, so it's half decent...enough for word documents or web browsing, but not much more than that. Fifty bucks and it's yours.

Greg

Man that broken power plug thing happened to every single one of those damn Presarios. I had a Presario 12xx series that happened to *AND* Business series Compaq Armada that it ALSO happened to!

Damn that sucks. I hate a freaking thief. Wish I could help you out. :/ Was it on campus?

I think Scott will give you his. He's got a lot of incriminating evidence on it anyway.

Haha... he doesn't have any emails to and from Senator Craig as well as an e-receipt for a plane ticket to Minneapolis, does he?

I have a Compaq Presario 13" PIII, 650MHz, Windows 2K Pro with 64mb of Ram and a 6GB harddrive. I just put it in the closet when I got my new Powerbook. Only problem is the power supply got yanked out by accident and broke the little nub inside. Consequently, you cant plug it in or charge it, but I'm told it's about a $50-100 fix. It's from about the year 2000, so it's half decent...enough for word documents or web browsing, but not much more than that. Fifty bucks and it's yours.

Greg

That would be a perfect machine... if it worked... if it were a desktop power-supply I'd hop on it... but notebooks are a PITA to get fixed. Thanks though :(

Man that broken power plug thing happened to every single one of those damn Presarios. I had a Presario 12xx series that happened to *AND* Business series Compaq Armada that it ALSO happened to!

Seriously... there should have either been a recall or some sort of class-action suit. I had a 1200 series back when I needed a dedicated Windows machine years ago. Not too long after the warranty expired the very same thing happened to it. I remember I ordered the internal connector for like 5 bucks or so but never did anything about it... I think it's still sitting in a box somewhere... but who knows if all the parts are still there.

You would think they would have addressed that flaw at some point during the production of that model series... but noooo. After that I've never recommended a Compaq to anyone... which I guess is pointless since they're technically HPs now.

Damn that sucks. I hate a freaking thief. Wish I could help you out. :/ Was it on campus?

I haven't gotten the full details yet. Evidently he was on some sort of school trip and when he got back to the bus it was gone. That's the story at least. They've filed a report with the police and the school was notified... although the school did not seem very concerned about it. I'm planning on speaking with the superintendent seeing as how my brother is seemingly inept to handle the situation. He was just like "well they said they couldn't do anything about it..." and that's it. I say BS... I think they're at least partially liable.



Anyway... I've gone on some of the local Craigslists and there may be a few possibilities. I don't like to buy anything off of ebay because it's a crap-shoot. I've found a G4 iBook for a few hundred dollars that I hope pans out. We'll see though...

Thanks everyone!

Man that broken power plug thing happened to every single one of those damn Presarios. I had a Presario 12xx series that happened to *AND* Business series Compaq Armada that it ALSO happened to!

:yup: saw that on 2 different compaqs myself