£15 laptop, worth the risk

continualdiamond

Yes, you read right.

£15 for a laptop.

I work in a school and they're getting rid of laptops. They stated they were ideal for browsing the net etc but not for gaming or downloading etc.

They had 5 for £20 and 1 for £15 due to it possibly having a failed hard drive.

I put my name down and they had 12 more staff members so they did a pull names out of hat job and mine came out last for the £15 one.

I'm no tech person but assuming £15 is worth the risk? The hard drive possibly could be ok or if not would it be relative cheap to replace?

Im_just_careful

and you want an old PC then probably yes.

Both you and the school probably want to do a clean operating system install.

Hopefully the school site licence allows you to install the operating system again from scratch.

Otherwise it might have a licence "key" stuck on it underneath which you can use when reinstalling.

You probably will either need to learn a bit about computers or find a friend who does.

You will probably pay a few pounds for a second hand replacement hard drive if it really is faulty.

gonzo127

dont see a massive issue

depending on what connection it is even with a failed hard drive you are looking at £45 for a brand new hard drive which should be a simple job of unscrew a few screws ont he back of the laptop pull old hard drive out and slot new one in

and a operating system can be gotten for free by downloading and installing Linux - which is very easy to do and is perfect for web browsing

continualdiamond

They're not old old laptops, few years at the most.

Teachers had them and they've all just been updated.

Yes all of them have already been cleaned and cleared of everything.

My husband knows someone who knows about computers which is good.

For £15 I thought it was worth the risk to find out exactly how good or rubbish it may be. As my name got drawn out seems silly to pass up the offer.

At the moment we have a pretty good desktop pc so the laptop would be just a bonus.

gonzo127

for £15 i think its worth the risk, and as i said above even if the hard drive is dead a new one costs £45 on ebuyer

Mista_C

Even if it's a dud you could easily break even with just the screen on eBay. I break most BER (Beyond Economical Repair) laptops and sell the components on for my customers. It gives them a nice head start on a new laptop.