Do you guys think this is worth my time?

[EDL]

Some guy posted the following on craigslist.org, for $100

This is a used PIII Dell Latitude laptop. Service Tag: 8HIMB
Screen Size: 14.1
Memory: 128 Meg
Hard Drive: 18 gig
PIII 1.8 GHz (This was off of the website, might be 1 Ghz)
ROM: DVD 8x


I e-mailed him and he says the laptop boots up but then it shuts off (looses power). He even got a new battery. Any of you have previus experience with something like this? Is a nice system for the price, but how hard (or) expensive will it be to get it working?

Thank you for any recommendations you may have.

[Ferrit]

Looks to be a dell Latitude CPx J
http://support.dell.com/support/down...&os=WW1&osl=EN

Specifications here
http://www.tkoeducation.com/cpxhjspecs.htm

[ShadowWynd]

It depends on what is wrong. I have seen Dell Laptops do this with a bad LCD inverter, a bad motherboard, bad memory, a flaky PCMCIA card, or because not all of the screws holding the keyboard in place were tight. If the new battery comes with it, the machine would be useful as a parts machine - otherwise, probably not a good deal.

[Richard1]

I'm on my 4th latitude and if it's not the battery, then be prepared to do some work or to pay someone to do it. I probably wouln't buy it.

You can get new Inspiron for under $500 right from Dell or a refurbished one for even less from several places and most of those come with a thirty day warranty or more.

[tjj]

this laptop SERIES has a LOT of issues with the BATTERY.

read below for details. it seems that "battery detection" and CHARGING are/can be a cause of NOT BOOTING.

(by the way, the battery and the hard drive will go for WELL over $100.00 on e-bay)

http://ftp.us.dell.com/bios/CPSJ_A16.txt

from the link provided by "ferrit" to dell tech support.


The following updates were made to the A14 BIOS to create A15:

Issues Fixed:
1. Fixed issue in which some batteries may permanently stop charging.
2. Fixed issue in which Remote BIOS Update may fail to update the
BIOS.
3. Fixed issue in which the system intermittently fails to detect
when a new battery is inserted.
4. Fixed issue in which System Setup may take 7 seconds to recognize
a new battery.
5. Fixed issue in which the system may fail to complete POST if the
battery is not responding.
6. Fixed failure to log on to a Boot Server when booting from a PXE-
enabled CardBus NIC.
7. Fixed issue seen on systems equipped with SpeedStep-capable
processors in which the processor runs at its low speed during
boot, regardless of the SpeedStep setting in System Setup.
8. Fixed video corruption seen when entering System Setup with more
than 256MB RAM installed.
9. Fixed issue seen when using Safeguard Easy security software in
which a "No bootable devices" error is seen after entering
the correct password.

Enhancements:
1. Optimized the battery charging algorithm.


The BIOS release has been validated on the following operating systems:
1. Microsoft Windows 95 v4.00.950B
2. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP5
3. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP6
4. Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition APM only
5. Microsoft Windows 2000 ACPI
6. Microsoft Windows Millennium ACPI

[slgrieb]

Buying a "fixer-upper" laptop is always a bad idea due to cost of parts.