Wednesday, January 11, 2006

I love eBay!

Scored five -- five! -- high-capacity lithium-ion batteries, all in great shape, for my trusty Compaq Armada M300 notebook computers (I have two of them), for US$60 total, less than half the price of just one new battery. And -- bonus! -- turned out the guy selling them lives two kilometers from my home, so I just dropped by to pick them up, saving the shipping charge.

Compaq Armada M300s are great little notebooks -- 1" thick, 3.4 pounds, quiet. And, since they're a few years old, they're are lots of them cheap on eBay.

I'm also quite fond of NEC MobilePro palmtops, either model 780 upgraded to the 790 ROM, or an actual 790. They're also common and cheap on eBay. (Nice thing about being a writer is that you don't actually need the newest or fastest computers.) Put either "M300" or "MobilePro 790" into the search box on eBay and you'll see lots of them.


8 Comments:

At January 20, 2006 12:20 PM , Blogger Hel Fire said...

ah yes, eBay is wonderful... :)

 
At January 20, 2006 11:14 PM , Blogger paultheguru said...

funny i am on an m300 now ! wonderful batteries. they last anywhere from 3 seconds to 13 minutes. I have had 6 !! Thanks for the idea of selling them on Ebay

 
At January 21, 2006 12:02 AM , Blogger Joe Tornatore said...

first time visitor. i love Ebay too. my mom has one better. she found a site that resales all confiscated and seized property via police auctions. they just bag and tag the stuff and some of it is a gold mine. she gave me about 5 pounds of sterling silver jewelry she got for nothing and one time she bought a set of suitcases that had a rolled hundred dollar bill in the midsize bag. i can't go over her house without carrying merchandise out. last week, i went over her house to take her out to dinner. she didn't like my shirt and threw me a brand new Kenneth Cole shirt(from her auction site) with a pricetag of $69.00. she got it for a couple of bucks.

 
At January 22, 2006 12:07 AM , Blogger IT)Ss MEe!!!! said...

thats rite ebay iz great....

 
At May 25, 2006 10:27 AM , Blogger George said...

I'm a writer, too -- looking for something extremely portable to tote to the coffee shop, the bookstore, classroom, etc. Does the Mobilepro 790 have a keyboard big enough for non-elfin hands?

I wanted to get one of those tiny little Sony Vaios for a while, but they cost more than my car. I had a Dell that weighs about as much as a med student's backpack that -- seriously -- threw my wife's back out once when she picked it up.

I had an Alphasmart word processor -- which was amazing, ran on AA batteries for like 700 hours and was tough enough to take a bullet or two -- but its display was only four lines of about 35 characters. Like writing on a Texas Instruments calculator.

If you're just using it for word processing, is the Mobilepro 790 a good choice? Or would you recommend sacrificing portability and going with the Armada?

Thanks in advance!

 
At May 25, 2006 10:32 AM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

The MobilePro 790 is a good second writing machine, although I wouldn't recommend it for anyone with large hands. And cheap! Perfect for coffee-shop writing.

Armada M300 is a good computer -- lightweight, nice design. But I've had two fail on me over the years, so don't spend much on one.

 
At June 30, 2006 11:10 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

HI Robert, I am Janet Sawyer Michel(Inventor} , Geologist.
My grandmother Jenny E, Booth s father was from Canada, she married Ansel sawyer from canada. Her father was my GGrandfather. he was originally from Eng. she had my father who was Robert F,sawyer b. in Vinal Haven ME. They moved back to Watertown,NY in 1926; where my Grandfather Ansel Sawyer died. Is any of this farmiliar to you? Janet Jjm285332AOL.COM

 
At June 30, 2006 11:18 AM , Blogger RobertJSawyer said...

Hi, Janet. I'm afraid not. My grandfather, Arthur Sawyer, emigrated to Regina, Saskatchewan, from England in 1911, and had only one child, my father John. Arthur did have two brothers, Ernest and Herbert, but neither had children. Their father (my great-grandfather) was John Thomas Sawyer, of England; we don't know whether he had brothers. Still, it's a great name! :)

 

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