Buying a used laptop

[Flannelwarrior]

I found an Asus 650VT on Craigslist for $500. This is by far the best deal I've seen on CL lately. I'm going to suck it up and buy last generation hardware - the newest lineup is sexy but the only hardware intensive thing I'll be doing is playing SC2 and compressing the occasional movie to watch on my phone.

This brings me to my question. What should I look for when I'm checking out the laptop before I buy it? I'm planning on running Memtest86+, and doing some stress tests to make sure the temperatures aren't insane, as well as entering BIOS and confirming that nothing is overclocked (not that it wouldn't be easy to clock back to factory settings before showing the laptop off). Is there anything else I should check for? Are there hard drive diagnostic tools?

 

[raybay]

Get one that has the install/reinstall/restore disk as part of the package... Sometimes they will throw in an older hard drive than the one that came with the machine... Find out what hard drive is installed... and avoid it if the drive is not a Western Digital, Seagate, or Fujitsu... If a solid state drive, avoid it.
Were it my choice, I would buy one from a regular store... there will be lots of sales now that school is out... and they will offer a warranty... Sometimes even a 30 or 90 warranty is all you need to make the computer as good as new.
I would think of that ASUS 650VT at $500 to be a price too high.