Buying a used Dell E6400 from craigslist, what to check?

Some guy is selling an E6400 for $750 with 3 year warranty left. It's $300 cheaper than a simliar configuration brand new. What things should I check for? this will be my first laptop. Of course i'll check to make sure all the parts work, test everything out. anyway to test if there are overheating issues? build quality issues? can i see if the seller exchanged any parts? He says he has a service # that i can check with Dell, not sure what this is though.

 

a service tag is a unique ID all dell laptops have. you can input it into dells online support, and it will tell you info like when the system was shipped, how long the warranty has remaining, what warranty it is, and what the original shipped configuration was.

thus you can compare the hardware you receive, with the info of the original shipped system as per identified on the dell site.

 

here's his listing: Specs: T9400 CPU (C2D 2.53 GHz, 6 MB L2 CACHE, 1066 FSB), 2 GB Ram (8 GB RAM MAX), 256 MB NVIDIA video card, DVD-R/RW drive, 14.1" LED screen, 80 gb hdd (7200 RPM), camera, hdmi, LIGHTED KEYBOARD, 6-cell battery. comes with dell genuine windows xp pro and windows vista business, roxio creator & dvd player software. warranty. this is legit. can give you service tag # to check with dell


it doesn't seem that the T9400 is an option on Dell's configurator. it doesn't have HDMI either so those two things are throwing me off.

 

Did you even read or have any general idea of service tag? Both his reply and the copy paste you got from the seller insist on checking the service tag.

 

You can get a refurbished one from the outlet for the same price. I think that would be better than buying second-hand...

 

of course i did, it's RIGHT there seller isn't back from his trip yet, and i'd like to get as much info as i can before i head out and look at it.

 

im trying to look on Dell's Outlet/Refurb site, but i'm not able to check on stock of the E6400s which i clickon the link. It'll just reload the page for me. ANyone else experiencing this?

http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/latit_usage?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb

 

The outlet is down

 

Dell outlet is sometimes down due to maintenance, you could try in a few hours.

 

If you do go buy that Latitude, a key thing to check would be heat. You'll want to meet somewhere where you can put it on a flat surface and plug it in, then run something like Orthos stress test, 3DMark, or Furmark to check the temps. A few latitudes here exhibit an overheating problem, and you certainly don't want that.

Also check for dead pixels, make sure all of the hardware works as much as possible, etc. Then look for damage to the casing which might indicate internal damage.