Woo hoo !!! I finally jumped in an got myself a laptop. It’s a Dell Inspiron 700m, at an unbelievable price of CAD (yes, Canadian dollars) $760, taxes and S&H included.
I’ve been looking at laptops since that US $750 deal came up a few weeks ago, and although Dell still has them here and there (Slickdeals.net , NotebookReview.com , NotebookForums.com etc), nothing actually came close to that deal I got off Ebay yesterday.
The 3 laptops that I was considering to buy were:
- Dell Inspiron 9300
- Dell Inspiron 700m
- ASUS Z71V
I was strongly leaning towards the ASUS, mainly due to performance and great reviews off the internet, but had the 700m considered in the back of my mind for travelling about. I needed this notebook to do some personal work on the train trips to and from work, so the 700m would have seemed like a perfect fit. And yet, deep down inside, I still wanted that bleeding edge specs for a PC like I could’ve configured with either the 9300 or A71v.
My original hesitance towards the 700m comes up from these thoughts:
- It doesn’t have DDR2 memory like the other 2;
- It doesn’t have dedicated graphics memory like the other 2 (hence, it will be crappy for newer games… Reviews everywhere do not recommend the 700m for gaming at all); and
- The keyboard is smaller and will take some time gettings used to.
And yet, after thinking about those points for the last week or so, I convinced myself that:
a. I don’t need DDR2 memory since I’m not doing anything bleeding edge;
b. I don’t need dedicated graphics memory since I don’t have any time at all to play games, and all the games I’ll play are old stuff or non 3-D;
c. I can get used to the keyboard; and
d. This laptop looks nice and is easy to carry around and
e. With the budget I have, it seemed like the most logical and cost-effective choice.
So with those thoughts in mind, I was just browsing around for deals the last few days, and yesterday on Ebay I couldn’t believe what I saw. This guy was selling about 50 of these laptops with a starting price of 99 cents. Of course when I looked at them, they all were hovering around the CAD $250 price range. I looked at the descriptions, and found out that it included 512Mb RAM and the 8x DVD +/- burner, plus he shipped the items for free. The final bonus? This guy was in Canada, so no duties to pay for border crossing 
I talked to my wife about this yesterday evening, and decided if I could get it for under $1, 000 CAD then I’d go for it. Surprise surprise, when I bid with 4 seconds left, I got it for $760 !!!. During the outburst of joy after I got this, I didn’t realize that I could’ve bought 2 more of these (these 50 auctions were spread out to end within 3 minutes of each other) to sell afterwards and try recover some of the cost :(. Oh well, I got a pretty good deal and it’s all fine and dandy.
Made the payment last night, and I’m hoping to get the laptop in my hands within the next week or so. I’ll post some initial thoughts and reviews when I get it.
Go Ebay !!!
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