buying an old laptop on ebay - any tips?

[mushroom]

Looking to spend no more than £100. Operating system doesnt matter as XP will be put on it.

Current I am using ebay's search filters to find laptops with:

bigger than 5GB HDD
400MHz or more processor
128MB RAM or more

Any other things I should consider? And what about makes are some more reliable than others?

[latency]

I find toshibas are pretty good second handers, as are IBM laptops.
Beware of samsung laptops, usually very plasticky and known to over heat.

[mushroom]

Is it easy to get replacement batteries for most of them?

[latency]

Yea, check ebay and froogle for the model number of the battery.

Expect to pay though, a new battery is a still a new battery, even if you only paid £100 for the laptop.

Before you actually buy the laptop, take a good look at what you're buying and what you might have to buy for it.
If you spend £130 on the laptop, then £40 on a new battery, then £15 for a wireless dongle, £20 for a laptop bag... etc etc... you might get nigh on the price of a bottom end Dell laptop that'll be 10x faster and newer.

Old laptops didn't have as much on them, so it's very easy to fall into an accessories trap...

[nicky munchkin]

You should be able to get a 1ghz+ 256mb ram laptop for your budget, which will run XP fine.

As mentioned Toshiba are good.

[Chrisonator]

in fact look for some acer ones. you should be able to get one in close to new condition on ebay with a intel pentium 1.7ghz and 256mb of ram for around 100. then ram can always be bought off of <link removed - Forthy> . i used that site to get ram for my brothers acer travelmate 2410. i paid £20 for a 1gb stick of it and its garanteed to work with that laptop and it did.

[Fireblade]

... ram can always be bought off of xxxx

:eek:

Suggesting someone look at/buy RAM (or anything else for that matter) from a competitor site... on Kustom PCs (http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/Kustom_PCs_Shop_Memory_42.html) forums, is just not on fella :rolleyes: