Cheap Laptops | Cheap Netbooks Blog

Even though refurbished laptops appear to be the best option available a lot of people still think it is risky to buy one or they have a large number of misconceptions regarding refurbished models. Through this post I will try to clear up some of those misunderstandings and will try to answer the most frequently asked questions.

• What is laptop refurbishing? And How is a Laptop Refurbished? : Simply repairing a defective laptop does not make it refurbished. A laptop will have to go through a number of stages of repair and quality control before it can be placed back in the marked. I have already explained the method of refurbishing step by step in a previous post.

• Do We get a Warranty With a Refurbished Laptop: Nowadays all refurbished laptops come with a minimum warranty of 6 months. 6 months is more than enough to determine if your machine is defective or not. If a laptop does not show any defects in 6 months then most probably it never will. However extended warranties of up to 2 years, for the used laptops, can be purchased from the laptop manufacturers.

• Are Used Laptops And Refurbished laptops the Same? : No, like I have explained in my posts time and time again, a used laptop is NOT a refurbished laptop. A refurbished laptop is that which has been checked and repaired by the laptop manufacturers, it is then packaged as new and sent to the market to be sold. A refurbished laptop can be compared to a new laptop. A used laptop on the other hand is simply a second hand laptop.

• Are There Any Other Advantages to Buying Refurbished Laptops? : The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. To read about them you should check out my other posts, I have already discussed all of this in detail. Click here to check out my other posts.
  

The general idea people have about cheap refurbished laptops is that they may be out of date or repaired or defective in some way. This is far from the truth, refurbished laptops are actually latest models that have been returned to the company.

The return may have been caused by a number of reasons. They may be canceled orders from the company store or the might have some software or minor issue which the company repairs themselves and then repackages them as new and sends them back to the market to be sold as refurbished laptops.

If a laptop has some major problem then in this case the company replaces the entire motherboard of the laptop. This way they completely eliminate the problem due to which the laptop was sent back in the first place. the fact of the matter is that as long as the laptop manufacturers themselves work on the laptop and then re-package it to be sold as new. This shows that the refurbished laptops are as good as new.

The main advantage of a cheap refurbished laptop is their price. The refurbished model can be bought at almost half the price of the new model. This way you get the latest model and that too at almost half the price.

The refurbished laptop, once repaired by the company, is tested extensively to prove their functionality and reliability. After passing all the tests the laptop is sent to the market and sold at a greatly reduced price. In addition almost all of the stores offer a 6 month warranty period for all refurbished laptops. This way you can buy a refurbished model without any risks or fear. Considering all of the facts above I can easily say that a refurbished laptop is as good as a new laptop or in some cases even better.

If you are looking for a good laptop but don't have the funds to buy one then why not start looking for refurbished laptops. Like I already explained in my previous post, cheap refurbished laptops are as good as new laptops. To read that post click here.

In this post I'll try to explain why refurbished laptops are better than new ones and that you should not waste money buying new ones when the same model can be found as a refurbished. Now lets talk about some of the reasons why you should prefer refurbished laptops over new laptops:

Cheap Refurbished laptops :

Price:

One of the biggest reasons why you should consider buying a refurbished laptop is the price. refurbished laptops are extremely cheap. In most cases, you are looking at getting at least 50% off the price that you would have to pay if you bought the laptop brand new. Here I would like to emphasize yet again that a refurbished laptop does not mean that it has bee discarded or is defective. A refurbished laptop is one that has been repaired by the manufacturing company themselves. While in most cases the refurbished laptops may as well be a canceled order from the company store.

Better Specifications:

Suppose you have only $400 to buy a laptop. In this budget you can either get an entry level new laptop that has only the bare minimums and may be equipped with a weak celeron processor or you can get a heavily equipped laptop with a powerful dual core processor for the same price. So by buying a refurbished laptop you actually get the best specifications for the lowest price.

Warranty:

Another misconception people have about refurbished laptops is that they are without any warranty and therefore buying such machines is a risk. This is wrong. All of the refurbished laptops today come with a 6 month warranty period. Provided this is half as compared to the 1 year warranty that comes with new machines but 6 months is more than enough to determine the stability of a machine. If your laptop works for 6 months without any problems then most probably it will not have any problems in the future as well. So while buying a refurbished machine make sure that you get the 6 month warranty period.

A repaired laptop cannot be called a refurbished laptop. All companies have different methods of restoring their laptops. Having said that they also maintain a certain standard and have to strictly follow it. A laptop once returned to the company goes through multiple stages before it can be placed in the market again. Below I will explain each step of the repair process and after such a process it is very rare to find a defective refurbished laptop.

• Examination of All Hardware Components: The first thing the company does when they get a laptop back is to check all of the hardware components. They try to determine what caused the customer to send it back. Every component is carefully checked and when a faulty component is located they simply replace that component with a new one. Thus completely eliminating the problem.

• Diagnostics and Performance Tests: Once the laptop is up and running with the new hardware and replaced components they rigorously test the machine. During this time the laptop operates at maximum load for extended periods of time. A defective laptop will never be able to operate at full load for extended periods so through this test they confirm that the laptop is no longer defective.

• Cleanup and Scratch Repair: Before packing the laptop is cleaned up. They remove any dirt or fingerprints and bring the laptop to a new glossy condition. In this stage they also repair any scratches or marks that have been formed by the previous owner or during the repair process. Finally the laptop is sent to packaging where they box up the laptop and send it back to the market where it is sold as cheap refurbished laptop.
  

The problem with cheap laptops is that you never know what you are gonna get, like I mean the laptop may look perfect but after you bring it home you find yourself to be disappointed. So that is why you have to do your proper research before going out or online to buy from the huge variety of cheap laptops. That is why im just going to write some tips here for the very new shoppers, for the rest of you this post most probably will annoy you and will appear extremely lame.

List-a-Lot: Im sure not all of you are hardcore gamers and not all are casual browsers. So everyone's expectations from their laptops are different. So before buying a laptop make a list of the things you will need a laptop for. (This tip was so obvious that I dont even know why I mentioned this here.)

Game Much? Like I mentioned in the above tip you should buy the laptop according to your needs. If you are a gamer then obviously an Intel Celeron laptop will not work for you even if it is one of the cheapest laptops you could find, similarly for gaming purposes you will need a dedicated graphics chip and s whole lot of RAM.
If you don't play games on your laptop then yours will definitely be a cheap laptop, even the very basic specifications will be more than enough for you. For the non-gamers buying a core 2 duo laptop with 4GB RAM and a dedicated graphics chip will be a waste of money. (Reality Tip: If you are a gamer and are looking for cheap gaming laptops then you should stop right here because gaming laptops are not cheap, they're just not. If you do find an extremely cheap gaming laptop the chances are that its defective and might explode in your lap.)

Watch your Budget: Laptops are now available in different prices. So you should choose for a laptop that is within your low budget and not look at the skies when buying a laptop. It will only disappoint and hurt you. Seriously I've been through this before when you have a low budget dont even go to the expensive section. Just discretely note down the models of the expensive laptops and use Google to check them out. This method is tested and it keeps your self esteem high.

Use Online Shops: I've already mentioned the benefits of online shopping and I'm sure most of my readers are already aware of the other benefits ;) So I wont mention them here again.

Do Your Research: At this point I don't have anything else to write about and I'll just keep on repeating the same stuff I already mentioned in this article. So if you read till here then I believe that I have wasted quite a lot of your time and won't waste any more of it. If you want to read some actual cheap laptops or refurbished laptops articles then read the articles below. I wrote this because I had nothing else to write about the topic of this blog. Hope I didnt annoy you too much :)

After covering all the topics related to laptops Im now gonna dedicate some posts to netbooks only and how you can get cheap netbooks. Also in this short introductory post i'll point out some of the basic differences between netbooks and laptops.

Netbooks, also known as mini laptops or mini notebooks have rapidly gained popularity over the past few months. And one of the main reasons for this is the addition of Hybrid support in netbooks. Before netbooks used to come with only solid state drives (SSD) so the hard drive would be either 4 GB or 8GB but now with hybrid support netbooks can support SSD drives along with conventional 2.5" 160GB or 250GB drives.

Netbooks or refurbished netbooks are smaller, inexpensive and lighter versions of their laptop versions. Some of the main differences of are:

Weight and Size: These are basically the main selling factors for netbooks, light weight and small size. All cheap netbooks have to be light and small. It is because of this they fall in the netbook category. Netbooks are very light they usually weigh around just 3 pounds. And their size is determined by their screen dimensions. Screen dimensions vary from 8.9" to 10.1". The 10.1" is more popular because it can support higher desktop resolutions.

Minimal Hardware: Netbooks are not meant to be powerful processing machines. They only have the bare minimum hardware. Just enough to get the job done or they are just enough for regular daily applications. Don't expect any netbook to support any of the latest games. Netbooks don't come with optical drives, the reason for this is that in such a small casing there is no space to fit the optical drive. There are also no internal modems or any expansion slots.

Weak Processor: Almost all netbooks come with an Intel Atom processor. This processor is very weak and is designed to handle all of the daily or regular applications such as firefox, thundebird, pidgin, etc.

Affordable: I wont say that netbooks are cheap their price tag has reached those of the budget line laptops. But for the benefits they give such as portability and longer battery life they are considered cheap and affordable.

Whether you want to buy a laptop or netbook that depends entirely on how you are going to use that machine. Will it be for heavy tasks and multi-tasking or do you want to have portability. Sadly you cant have both so you have to choose.

Jolicloud v1.0 is set to bring with it full touchscreen support, just in time for the mass number of tablets and convertible netbooks that are due to hit the market. There’s no release date for the latest version, but we’ve attached a video after the break that shows a demonstration of the touch-enabled Jolicloud OS running on a Samsung NB30 netbook with touchscreen display.








Here is a list of supported touchscreen technologies:
* ADS7846/TSC2046 and ADS7843 based touchscreens
* AD7877 based touchscreens
* AD7879 based touchscreens: AD7879-1 I2C Interface
* AD7879 based touchscreens: AD7879 SPI Interface
* Compaq iPAQ H3600 (Bitsy) touchscreen
* SharpSL (Corgi and Spitz series) touchscreen driver
* Touchscreen support for Dialog Semiconductor DA9034
* EETI touchscreen panel support
* Fujitsu serial touchscreen
* Gunze AHL-51S touchscreen
* Elo serial touchscreens
* Wacom W8001 penabled serial touchscreen
* MELFAS MCS-5000 touchscreen
* MicroTouch serial touchscreens
* iNexio serial touchscreens
* ICS MicroClock MK712 touchscreen
* HP Jornada 6xx touchscreen
* HP Jornada 7xx touchscreen
* HTC Shift X9500 touchscreen
* Penmount serial touchscreen
* Renesas MIGO-R touchscreen
* Touchright serial touchscreen
* Touchwin serial touchscreen
* Atmel Touchscreen Interface
* Philips UCB1400 touchscreen
* Support for WM97xx AC97 touchscreen controllers
* WM9705 Touchscreen interface support
* WM9712 Touchscreen interface support
* WM9713 Touchscreen interface support
* WM97xx Atmel accelerated touch
* WM97xx Mainstone/Palm accelerated touch
* Zylonite accelerated touch
* USB Touchscreen Driver
o eGalax Touchkit USB (also includes eTurboTouch CT-410/510/700)
o PanJit TouchSet USB
o 3M MicroTouch USB (EX II series)
o ITM
o Some other eTurboTouch
o Gunze AHL61
o DMC TSC-10/25
o IRTOUCHSYSTEMS/UNITOP
o IdealTEK URTC1000
o GoTop Super_Q2/GogoPen/PenPower tablets
o JASTEC USB Touch Controller/DigiTech DTR-02U
* Sahara TouchIT-213 touchscreen
* TSC2007 based touchscreens
* W90P910 touchscreen driver
* Motorola PCAP touchscreen