## pre-owned laptops%%xp

Posted on by tiger40490 rendered_on [ Thu, 6 Mar 2025 ] 13:14 UTC

J4 using 3 laptops concurrently at home:
keep every laptop actively maintained and monitored, so they don’t come out of “warehouse” damaged by disuse
get used to no-touchscreen.
get a concrete feel of how fast a 2023 entry-level laptop can be.
try out Win11 in various usage scenarios

“Pre-owned laptops%%xp”

I guess I would stop buying pre-owned laptops from now on, due to

  • higher cash position
  • experienceS of higher risk

Pattern inferred based on roughly 7 experiences. Each machine has 5Y average lifespan before giving big or small problems. Even though reseller would polish it up on the exterior, the internal components are still nearing EndOfLife.

Tip: we never know what problems it had before, in hard disk, or motherboard, or screen,
Tip: never buy a pre-owned laptop and leave it unused for years.
Tip: never pay more than $200 for a pre-owned, as it could fail within 3M.
tip: better power up each unit at least once a week, otherwise oxidization would ruin it
Tip: regular laptops are designed for 8 hours of usage.

— long-service awards across pre-owned and brand-new laptops

  • two Toshiba (2006, and $2009) are both long-lasting. Had problem after 5+ years
  • wife’s $700 acer Aspire bought in 2011 – had minor problem with keyboard in 2015/2016 after 5+ years. Also improved battery, RAM and glue… See 16 Aug mail.
  • HP$499: bought in 2015, used many years in SG and during c++us
  • Dell250: see below
  • HP71 .. bought July 2021
  • A95: bought new from LaptopSG in Jun 2020 right after first lockdown.
  • — hopefully long-service:
  • L399 .. bought new as 2022 X’mas gift

–S$120 acer  netbook from cash converter? keyboard fixed; OS was in Chinese so needed a reinstall; replacement battery good lifespan
—S$250 dell bought in mid 2016, including 10M warranty.

  1. Down within a few months.
  2. Had problems with the additional RAM.. removed
  3. Then it started freezing up in the middle of browsing or file editing. Recovered
  4. In Jul 2018, win-key mysteriously stopped working, but recovered in Aug 2018 … 2021 good
  5. As of Jul 2021, the only minor issue is – when I reopen the lid, mouse would freeze so I need to make it sleep->wake again. 8 out of 8 times mouse always recovered.

Overall, this is the best experience among my pre-owned laptops. I should trust the Simlim shop who said it would last at least 1 year.
— Above are the two good pre-owned laptops. Below are the other pre-owned:
$99 IBM T40? broken within a few months
$350 HP mobile workstation? Broken within a year. Too expensive
$180 IBM bulky one? GM used for a while. Can’t remember what went wrong.
$500 + $500 Two identical Acer small laptops including one from Wenqiang. After some years both went bad.