eBay trading

On the whole eBay is a great place to get a bargain (and to spend your hard-won internet earnings) but sometimes eBay throws up an anomoly. I have noticed that when looking for computers on eBay, unlike with desktops (which you can hardly give away), laptops fetch silly prices.
Even the lowest spec broken rubbish laptops seem to go for a minimum of £100. My advice is to be careful about bidding for laptops on eBay, to get anything half-decent will cost you as there seems to be a lot of people prepared to bid way over the odds. Bear in mind that with a laptop, you will need all the drivers if you are going to re-install the operating system - the drivers for laptops seem to be a lot less 'standard' than for desktops particularly drivers for wi-fi etc.. Also bear in mind that changing a motherboard or processor in a laptop is not a job for the faint-hearted. If you are bidding on a laptop that is not working, you have to bear in mind that if the processor has burnt out, you are probably wasting your money. At least with a desktop you can simply fit a new one.
Laptops are limited in every respect apart from portability, for instance your laptop will be slower, have less memory capacity and a smaller hard-drive than the equivalent costing desktop. It is far more likely to have significant damage after the first year or so, frequently laptops are sold with broken keypads, broken screens - often they are sold as seen as the owner can't even get them to boot up, but yet there are apparently plenty of bidders who are willing to take a massive risk.
That said, I still want one, and I will probably use eBay to get it unless I get lucky and can find someone who has a laptop to get rid of.