Here on ebay there are literally thousands of laptop auctions every day with new ones arriving and closing so fast that it is hard to keep track of them. Unless you are a seasoned professional or a serious gambler, you most likely have a headache by the time you decide to bid on one. Then it happens, YOU WON..how do you feel? You may have a sick feeling at the bottom of your stomach..maybe you made a good decision, maybe not. Well, since I am basically a laptop nut and have bought on ebay for years, maybe I can help.

  I am not writing this to discredit any sellers or laptop manufactures (mfg's) out there..there sure are alot of great ones...but there are also those that make a living by buying and reselling, well..incomplete/part/obsolete/junk laptops. First ask yourself, what are you looking for and what will you use it for? If you are an internet person and that is the laptops main use, your needs will be vastly different than an extreme gamer where everything from the processor/hard drive/memory/graphics card has to be FAST. Once you have an idea what you need, or would like to have, the search begins. If you are new to laptops, three things to consider are the mouse, the display and are you going to use the laptop mobile or at your desk (for example). Let's start with the mouse..one nice thing about a laptop is it is a fully contained unit unlike a desktop that has the external keyboard and mouse. Why buy a laptop and hang an external mouse on it unless you just want to..the mouse that is onboard on most laptops are two typical designs.. a Trackpad/Touchpad (other names are used depending on the mfg)..this is typically a small rectangular surface located below the space bar. The surface reacts to the touch of your finger and controls the mouse arrow/cursor movement. Most also have a tapping feature where you can tap the pad once for a left mouse function and twice for a right mouse function.. there is also scrolling, etc that some models use..but basically that is how the mouse will function. The touchpad will have the left and right mouse buttons as well. The second type is a trackpoint (also called other names depending on the mfg) this is a small "eraser head" control located between the G-H-B keyboard keys. The trackpoint is the cursor control and operates by placing your fingertip on the trackpoint and applying slight pressure left-right-up-down-etc to move the mouse arrow/cursor. The trackpoint is only for mouse movement and replies on the left and mouse buttons for those functions. The mouse is needed to use the laptop for almost any purpose so select the one you want to use WISELY or trust me, you will hate the laptop on that feature alone. The trackpoint is hard to get used to and can be tempermental, but very nice once you use it. The touchpad also will take some getting used to and my worst complaint is either the mousepad will show excessive wear (the silver color ones) easily and make the laptop appearance look well used and the "tap to select" feature on some is very sensitive and will falsely open windows. You decide.. Next, let's talk about the display..the display of a laptop can vary widely.. the size of the screen (measured from corner of corner of the glass panel) to the type of screen. The most common newer laptop models are a widescreen that is longer than it is tall. An older laptop will have a square screen. The size of the screen will also make your laptop experience a joy or a reason to keep it in the bag or box, unused. Be careful of small screens.. there are several 10" screens out there..they are too small for normal computer use. There are some that are smaller than that, and hard to fit a page on them (like the small 10") and hard to use. Be also careful of too BIG of a laptop screen. That may sound odd, but remember this is a laptop with the keyboard just inches from the bottom of the display and that puts your eyes about 2-2 1/2 feet away from the screen. I am using a 17" wide screen right now and I do not like the size of the display. The ideal size for a normal display is 14-15" max. The 13.3" are ok as long as the resolution is set to a level where the entire page or window will open. On a widescreen, the 14" or 15.4" are both ideal. My favorite is the 14" widescreen..very nice but not as common as the 15.4". The newer laptops are all TFT (Thick Film Transistor) but be careful of a HPA/Dual Scan type display. These are out there with several mfg'd. The display quality is very poor as it uses overlays instead of millions of individual transistors as the TFT display has. The higher end laptops will have very high screen resolutions and high quality display screens but expect to pay $$$ for it. Be very careful about buying a laptop with any type of screen disorder. Chances are a new screen will be needed and you can easily have as much money as what a new laptop can cost by the time you have it repaired. I will get more into what to avoid in part 2. Before I wrap up this guide, let me touch on the third consideration, where is the laptop going to be used? If it is on your desk, then the weight and any external drives really won't matter much. Alot of laptops have gone to super thin designs and use external drives (DVD, DVD R/W, CD, FLOPPY, ETC). This is something to look for and maybe avoid if you want to use these drives much. Not only are the drives outside the laptop making the mobility extremely awkward, but they all have to connect to the laptop somehow and this connection point will not last forever and some are very fragile and can easily become damaged in the laptop. Most of the laptop connections are part of the mainboard, or motherboard, and if damaged, the value of the laptop is not much more than a box of shiny rocks. A very popular choice is a two spindle style.. with the hard drive being one spindle and the DVD, DVD/RW, CD drive (for example) being the second spindle. This keeps the laptop what it was designed to be, a nice neat self contained package.. Please read part two for more help..

Thanks for reading my guide!! Please vote on how this helped you..I know this may be basic information for most of you reading this. I would like to write more guides about laptops so I can share the 10 years of buying/selling and repairing them. I REALLY need your feedback to know if these are topics of interest for you. Please vote below..THANKS!!

All the best,

Bruce