Used Armada M700 - Good buy or bad idea?

After the video card in my now 11 year old 486-33 Gateway Colorbook died last January, I have been looking for a reasonably priced laptop ($500) with the following attributes:

-1 GHz
-~256 ram
-20-30 GB hard drive
-Serial (COM/RS-232) port

I intend to use it largely for game programming, so I wouldn't be running very demanding software on it. Probably the most demanding stuff I would use would be games that require a PII, and a software synthesizer which recommends a P3-800. A trip to a local used computer store revealed a ton of Armada M700's, and one of them met both my criteria and the price.

I owned a Compaq desktop several years ago which proved to be difficult to upgrade and fairly unstable late in its life. Are their laptops a more solid product, or are they prone to the same difficulties? Is the fact that there were more M700's than any other laptop in the store coincidental?

I would be willing to give them another chance, but I would expect a stable machine that I could rely on for at least another few years. Some say that computers, especially laptops, are only supposed to last three years, but my old laptop was ten and a half years old when it died.

Thanks in advance.

 

When you say you're going to use this for light gaming, how light do you mean? The M700's are a very old system that was replaced by the N600 series, then by the NC6000 series and finally by the NC6100/NC6200 series. The video capabilities of this unit is very low, so you may not be able to play the newer games. I just checked the specs and there's only 8MB of video memory on the unit, that's not a lot.

Notebooks are less upgradable than desktops, even compared to old desktops. It's mainly HDD and ram. If I were you, I'd spend a bit more and buy a new notebook instead of a notebook that has been off the market for the past few years.

-Vb-

 

By light gaming, I'd mean something like Starcraft or Diablo II; something that a gigahertz processor should have no difficulty handling.

I agree that the vram is kind of low, and I agree that a newer machine would, neglecting cost, be a better choice. However, it's difficult to find newer laptops that still have serial ports [ ]. That is where my dilemma arises.

Do you know of any newer models (from any manufacturer) which fit all the criteria I listed? I would probably be willing to shell out a bit more for a newer machine.

Thanks.

 

Do you have to have an actual Serial port or can you use a Serial to USB adapter?

-Vb-

 

My computer has both a serial port and a parallel port. You can get good deals on a refurbished unit on Ecost.com. If you get a Athlon XP processor, smaller HD and such, you can get one for $600-700 with a 90 day warranty. You can add an HP extended warranty or accidental damage protection, as well.

Happy hunting!
Russ

HP ZV5000z
Athlon 64 3000+
768mb RAM
60gb 4200rpm HD
nVidia G0 440 64mb
DVD-RW/CD-RW
1394, 5-in-1 card reader
15.4" wide screen
802.11 b/g w/Speedbooster

 

Yeah, a real serial port would be preferable, as some of the stuff I would be doing would be accessing it on the hardware level.

Thanks, rfortson, I'm looking into it.