The Aerie
I posted this to my church mailing list, but then I realized it could double as a blog entry with a little editing! Yay!
I have a little bit of time at the moment because I just finished the probably-final draft of my degree program for my U of MN class, and I haven't yet stopped slacking off at work, so I thought I'd get something posted...
For people in search of a portable writing device, my wife is a big fan of her Alphasmart Dana:
These are simply Palm devices with big attached keyboards. They are black and white, but include features such as wireless Internet connectivity. They are fairly inexpensive, and delightfully will run on rechargeable "AA" batteries.
For people in search of a cheap used laptop I often point at Que Computers,
An advantage to buying at Que is that you get to play with the laptops right there and verify they work before you purchase them. The disadvantage is that they are quite the nerdly place, and non-geeks might find the piles of strange equipment intimidating.
(I have no affiliation with Que except that I've bought a lot of computers from them over the years. Must be why they moved from East Hennepin Avenue into my neighborhood a couple of years ago.)
It must be noted that many companies sell very inexpensive new laptops, such as the Dell Inspirion at $549 (the usual stripped-down deal that almost always requires additional purchase of OS or memory or something). Nonetheless you CAN find some new notebooks for under $500 with a little looking. If you can stand buying at Best Buy (I don't) you can find loss-leaders at very good prices. Just don't buy their stinky warranty or service agreements (*shudder*).
My family ended our association with Best Buy after a repair clerk sneered at us and said "You can't expect us to repair this VCR for free: the ninety-day warranty is TWO-THIRDS EXPIRED." How much money has this arrogant stupidity cost Best Buy? Well, we were trying to repair a new VCR... I can't IMAGINE how much losing our custom has cost Best Buy over the decades, but I'm sure Best Buy doesn't care.
One can also visit the local Craigslist site:
http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/sys/
Right now there's an IBM Thinkpad for $190. Everything on Craigslist must be viewed with caution, but one advantage to buying a used laptop directly from the seller is that it often will come with the operating system in place. One of the non-obvious pitfalls of buying older, used computer equipment is that such a computer may have problems running contemporary software... and it's often impossible to find the older software that WOULD run quite adequately on the device.
Another group for Frugal Readers is the Minneapolis Free-Cycle
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freecycleMpls/messages
It has strict rules regarding posting that must be observed, but keeping an eye peeled on this list can garner all sorts of great free stuff. That's where we got our boys' bunk-beds and mattresses, all free.
Hope this is helpful!
Posted by Albatross at November 28, 2006 2:55 PM | TrackBack