Today one of my roommates came to me with her new laptop, well technically used laptop, that she got it for free from one of her instructors.  It’s always great to receive a gift like this, but there is always bad with the good, the moment she brought it home to connect to the internet it dangled with a connection but no internet.

Things to remember when you get a laptop from a previous owner:

  1. Ask the person if something wrong with it (it seems obvious if they are giving it away for free)
  2. Have them go over the general operation of the laptop, sometimes something needs to be wiggled or maybe something needs to be selected during startup.
  3. Ask them to reset any special settings they might of had on the laptop. In my roommates situation the DNS server settings were set to a static address.
  4. Make sure you get the power adapter and original installation CD
  5. Don’t forget to thank them! After all it is a free laptop!

- Aaron

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