My brother needs a used, refurb or extremely cheap laptop for his second home health job. He has a nice iMac at home. What's the cheapest new Windows 7 laptop on the planet, or the smartest used/refurb buy? Thanks.

any chance he could use the iMac and some virtualization software to run Windows 7? Or does it need to be a separate device altogether?

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clay
any chance he could use the iMac and some virtualization software to run Windows 7? Or does it need to be a separate device altogether?

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Grab a copy of Windows 7, download VirtualBox - [www.virtualbox.org], and that's as cheap as you can get.

Since you mentioned laptop though, perhaps he is needing portability with this other job?

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I recommend PC Exchange, down the street from me, which has used business laptops for $200-400, including the OS (XP or 7). They sell off-lease stuff, with a one-year warranty:

[www.pcexchange.com]

/Mr Lynn

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"Hillbilly at Harvard"
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On the river in Saxonville.

Yes, the portability is the issue.

Stephen,

I love the idea of running Windows via a virtual system like Parallels, Fusion or Virtualbox. However, my experience has taught me that it doesn't always work well. Using Fusion and Windows XP Professional, I had nothing but trouble printing from UPS Worldship. It refused to work properly despite my best efforts. That was one of the reasons I wanted to run Windows in window on my Mac. Not an issue with my wife's old IBM Laptop running Windows XP Professional.

FWIW, when my wife needed a new laptop, I suggested a Macbook and running Windows via a virtual solution. Or, just running it via bootcamp. She didn't want to know form it. Her job depended upon her being able to work from home and she didn't want to risk compatibility issues or dual booting and such. She ended up with a very nice HP laptop.

This is not to say running a Windows machine via a virtual solution won't work for your friend. It may do the job nicely. But, if his livelihood is dependent upon his ability to work from home, then I'd be more inclined to go with a real windows machine. A basic Windows machine can be had for $350 or less. 'course, going into the $500 to $700 range gets you a machine with solid performance.

I just saw a Groupon deal for a refurbed Dell Latitude. Don't know a thing about the model or whether or not it's a good price for said machine but it's probably worth a looksie. Same goes for checking out laptop deals via [www.techbargains.com]. Here's are the links:

[www.groupon.com]

[www.techbargains.com]

Robert

Dell refurb models with an outlet coupon can be good deals, and the machines come with a full Dell warranty (whose service is very good in my experience).

In 2010 I picked up a new Compaq Windows 7 Home Premium laptop at Staples for $249.

It's as slow as heck, but I just threw in 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD and I can get a few more years out of it.