Windows) If I wanted to get a working Windows laptop for about $50 (because of lack of enough computers in the house)

Are there any recommendations for a particular laptops? Whether to buy on ebay or craiglist?

 

I don't think you would find much in that price area because even on eBay, the actual act of taking the laptop, packaging it, taking it to the Fedex/UPS/PostOffice, standing in line, and doing the paperwork to ship it, will be worth more to the person than $50.

A Craigslist ad for something local might have slightly higher chances, but more than likely anything posted at that price is either horribly broken or will be gone in five seconds.

 

You'd be amazed at what you can find on eBay/Craigslist.

Feel free to start here (but don't expect much): laptop in PC Laptops & Netbooks | eBay

The biggest brick walls for you with that budget may be:

1. Shipping
2. Bid/Reserve price

 

How recent do you need it to be? My guess is that for that amount of money you won't get past Pentium 3 era if you're looking for a complete unit...however, for $100 you can pick far newer (as in PM or even an early Core Duo) machines...

 

I'm not sure how recent it should be but I want it to have at least 2450 Mhz.

 

Could you please elaborate on where this requirement is coming from? A 2.6GHz P4M will be vastly inferior in processing power to a 2.0GHz Core Duo...

 

A software that I would like to use has it on the page (for recommended CPU):

Intel Pentium 2450MHz or above
AMD Athelon 3200 or above

It is a foreign software.

 

That pretty much means (in the Intel world - I don't use AMD) that anything newer than a P4 2.5 will work...that being said, a complete, properly working laptop for $50 still seems like a stretch...

 

It IS a stretch. You're better off saving some money and making due with what you have until then.

 

You've mentioned this software requirement on two different threads so far. It would be helpful if you would share what software it is so that we can help you more effectively, since we have no idea what standards the publisher was using when they claimed the 2450MHz requirement. It's also legitimately possible that the software has other requirements that would be restrictive on the kind of old laptop you can get for that price.

What's restricting you from running it on your current computers? Your Toshiba, or even Windows running in BootCamp on your Mac, would be much faster than an old $50 laptop. If it's purely an issue of having enough computers in the house, remember that an old machine like this will be very limited in what it can do in a modern computing environment. You may well find that you're better off spending $200 for something that can do light tasks for the next few years rather than $50 and several days of searching for something that can do nothing more taxing than squeaking along with the software you're trying to run.

 

It's not really essential software, something that I thought would be good to have.
t's a voice chatting software: http://talkon.nate.com/ It says that it is recommended, not required. I suppose it would buffer if it doesn't meet that criteria.

Right now the Toshiba is gone because when I turned it in to Geek Squad for fixing they didn't have the same computer and they were going to junk it out and so I chose a new computer, HP laptop, but that one's screen broke a few days ago so I sent that to Geek Squad as well.
My MBP I could use but I don't have Windows installed on it as of right now. I only have 128 SSD on it and have 27 GB available space. How much space might the Windows take if I use VirtualBox?

But I think I would be satisfied with a $50 computer that can be just used to use the Internet, and can be re-opened without waiting for the screen to re-appear more than a few seconds, like the MacBook.

 

I would probably sell my old Inspiron (in sig) for $50 to someone who needed it simply because I don't use it and I'd rather have $50 than a computer I don't use, but unless you can get a deal like that where someone is selling something for less than it's worth for the sake of convenience, you're not likely to find a laptop that's capable of working like that for $50. That's simply less than people pay for working laptops.

I'm not offering the Inspiron, by the way - it's over 6000 miles away from me until July and I'd only do that if I were selling it to someone who could come pick it up at my convenience anyway. I'm just illustrating a situation in which you would be able to get a machine that's capable of moderate internet browsing for $50. It's not impossible to find something like this on Craigslist, but that's probably your best shot.

 

The problem boils down to finding a working, fully functional laptop for said price. You can pull up quite a few results on eBay (to my surprise), but you're taking a risk with that price tag - even if the unit is severely outdated.

 

Depending on what you need it for, buy one of those 7" Android tablets on Amazon for $60-$70. Probably be more powerful than any laptop you'd find for $50.

Heck I ordered one of these for $35: Amazon.com: Android 4.0 Mini PC: Computers & Accessories

Just hook it to any HDMI monitor or TV and hook up a USB mouse/keyboard and you're good to go. Great for basic web browsing and general tasks.

 

That is a good idea. That mini PC looks like a flash drive, can you plug in hdmi and USB mouse/keyboard into it?

 

Yes. I have used it with my 1080p monitor just fine. Notice I made that comment at the end of my last post...

 

That thing is one of the coolest innovations - despite it's simplicity - in my opinion. OP, if you can run whatever software you want to run off Android, this would be a better substitute, I think. The hardware on this is comparable - if not better - than the laptops you're looking at.

 

I think it can even be fixed to run Linux. Haven't tried yet but that's my ultimate goal, when I get a chance. That way it would be a very flexible device. I want to use it to stream videos for my kids' TV and as a basic web browser. Android is a little clumsy for that at the moment, but Linux would be perfect. Right now I'm using an old Athlon64 X2 PC to do all that, and it's just old, noisy, slow, and consumes lots of power for what it does (kinda like me, lol).

This one is just a single core. But there are dual core versions like these:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A8X4IP2
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0I4YJK

one even comes with a remote. Costs about $70-$75, but a worthy upgrade IMHO. If I get this working the way I want if the single core is too slow I may upgrade to one of these others

 

Android is based off the Linux Kernal, though. Which distro are you considering?

 

Well as other mentioned depends on what your looking to use the laptop for and also $50 might be hard to come by to get a computer laptop on craigslist or harder on ebay....but I would say check your local craigslist for a inexpensive laptop but you might have to haggle for price but $50 might be hard to find. And if you do it might be a older Pent4 not Duo or Duo2core laptop and you expansion for O/S to W7 will be limited because of the hardware and drivers for older laptop will be hard to find or will not install on W7. So as others have said you need to give us more details as what your looking for and what you plan to use it for?

 

There is that project that runs Android on ARM processor, you can get for $50. $25 for the computer, $25 for the casing. It's TINY, way smaller than a laptop. Maybe you can try to make something with that?

 

You mean the Raspberry Pi?