Buying Used Computers - Conclusion
Well, this is it. The white flag. Hands in the air. Surrender without honor. I give. Uncle. Crap. Decided to just live with a laptop with no PC card slot. Which means no modem. No network. No DVD. And the final price tag? $693.00. Not bad, not good. For maybe $300 more I coulda had a fresh one off the shelf with everything working. The bottom line: I saved roughly 30% on the purchase of a laptop, got three-year-old technology, and spent 28 total hours working on it to get it running (including 21 hours trying to get running what never got running).

When you elect to buy a laptop computer from a used computer dealer, the old "buyer beware" slams home with a vengeance. I don't particularly fault Retrobox.com, as the same scenario is playing out today in hundreds of home offices all over America with computers bought from half a dozen quite reputable dealers. It's just this: don't do this if you get angry easily, feel cheated easily, or really need every little thing to work.