Buying Refurb Laptops and building them up

IBM and/or Lenovo ThinkPads, HP Elitebooks or Probooks, Dell, Toshiba or other brands. One of the questions to ask when buying a laptop is "what am I going to do with it". Yes indeed that is an important question. The temptation is to go out by a laptop with a "just in case I need that feature one day" mentality. My fellow Steemit neighbor, that can be a very expensive mindset. About 5 years ago I bought an HP laptop for just shy of $800. It is a powerhouse to this day. I chose the parts, features and other stuff that I wanted via the HP website. Yes, it could have been easier and cheaper going through Best Buy's online store, Walmart or even buying it on Amazon. Would I have found exactly what I wanted? Chances are that I would have found some of what I wanted and a bunch of what I didn't need or want. A couple of years before I bought the HP, I purchased a 17" Acer laptop. Why so big? It was to replace the dying desktop. It was more mobile and the kiddos could use it in the open area and in the clear eyesight of either parent. Since those days I have bought numerous laptops. The strange part of it all is that I went in reverse concerning the age of the units. You see, one day I saw a man on YouTube showing off his ThinkPad T420 and the desktop traditional style keyboard and it made me excited like a little boy. Since that time I have been enamored with older laptops. I absolutely enjoy the rebuilding videos. I have found that it is less expensive and a whole lot of fun (sometimes) to build up an old laptop. There is a video online (see below), in which a gentleman showed how a college student can get a durable fully functional laptop for $100 or less. No joke! I believe it can still be purchased around $120 with everything needed to handle the daily tasks.

There isn't anything wrong with buying a newer laptop or newer cheaper Chromebook. However, there are plenty of refurbished laptops online that will get the job done as well, but the key is that you will have a lasting learning experience if you get one that can be worked on & upgraded (upgrading RAM, changing the hard drive, replacing the keyboard, etc.).

Here are some other videos I enjoy(ed). Thanks for dropping by!