$4001. What is your budget?
I think 13-14'' is a sweet spot, but any size will be considered.2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Doesn't matter much.3. What screen resolution do you want?
Needs to be portable, but doesn't have to be ultra-light. I have a strong back.4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
3 hours would be a minimum.5. How much battery life do you need?
Nope.6. Do you want to play games with your laptop?
It will be used for light office work, browsing, and skype while I travel.7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop?
I'll quite likely replace any existing HDD, so that's not a big deal.8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
http/www.ebay.com/sch/dell-official-store-usa-refurbished/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p36869. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
I've been hunting a while and these are about as cheap as I can find in business class laptops.
I keep my laptops forever.10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Don't really need any of them. USB drives are incredibly cheap.11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I prefer Lenovo, Dell, and HP because they have (in my experience) the only business class laptops that last and are worth purchasing refurbished.12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
US13. What country do you live in?
I've been keeping my eye on the Latitudes coming on the outlet and ebay listings because the Lenovo and HP off-lease stuff is harder to find in one place.14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
My primary concern is buying something that I can work on easily. As I said, I keep my laptops working forever and usually retire them to server duty or donate them to a local student in need.
The last fixer I purchased was a thinkpad T61 and it was extremely nice except for the fact that opening it up to work on the fan/heatsink required pulling out the keyboard and everything else and the battery life was poor (~2h).
I have worked on some Latitude models (not my own) which were opened with a single screw (heavenly) so that kind of access would be ideal. I don't see many business class hp laptops, so I have no clue what kind of situation their chassis are going to be.