Is it a bargain?

Suzann Dodd, Contributor

A guy is selling notebooks for something like $65,000 when you know they're about $100,000.

You think how wonderful it would be to have such a modern convenience. And you need to know, "Is it worth it?"

The most important thing with a notebook/laptop is age. These jobbies are supposed to last three years; they are income tax write-offs in three years.

When they roll off the assembly line every day they sit and catch dust counts.

I'll give you an example.

This jobbie was built in 1996. The battery which needs to be charged and run off at least three times before it gains its specifications has been stagnating for four years.

It's made out of some stupid junk which runs down fast and the day you don't turn your computer on/don't recharge the battery, it starts to slip.

You might buy a so-called 'never been used' 1998 computer which has a battery that is for all intents and purposes dead.

Recharging it is a waste of electricity for it might hold the charge an hour or two initially when it's supposed to go for an easy three plus and it's downhill from there.

Many old notebooks come fully loaded with Windows 95 or NT and have been 'reloaded' with 98. There are always problems when you load anything on a computer which, as many laptops/notebooks do, comes with a sticker - "Designed for -".

Take this jobbie. It has been 'reloaded' with 98 yet has most of the 95 options still in place. It believes it is running 95 though it is running 98.

Trust me, you don't want to know what this means.

I make a practice of never upgrading on notebooks. On PCs I'll do an f/disk and load on a naked hard drive. I'll be telling the computer what I'm doing and as it doesn't know any better it will behave.

With laptops/notebooks which are 'designed' for proprietary software, they'll maintain their ignorance.

Better to buy a brand new whatever in a box - and I don't mean, just arriving in Jamaica, I mean, brand new, that is built within the last few months.

If you ever do a dir at a command prompt, (shelling to DOS and typing dir/p at the prompt (you use the /p to slow down and give you a screen at a time) you'll see the date when the programmes were last modified.

If you see almost all are something like /97 or /98 you don't want this jobbie. Sure a few old faithfuls might have been pat since /96, that's nothing to be worried about as a few files haven't had to change. But if you're scrolling down a directory of something you plan to buy in 2001 and see the majority of files are more than a year old, you don't want this object.

Sure, if it's virtually being given away, (i.e. under $30k) you can say, 'okay, let's figure it will run a year, maybe two', which is reasonable; (figure $30k a year on a brand new three-year life span $100k jobbie).

But if it's over that, save your money.

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