What's the best way to test a refurbished laptop?

[ElectricBarbarella]

Just purchased a newly refurbished laptop off of ebay (two in fact). One arrived today and I need to play test this thing tonight so that I can return it if any problems or leave feedback if not.

I've already run a DVD, it instantly detected my wifi and opened the internet, Word opens and runs....

What else do I need to do to this thing (and where to check) to make sure it works exactly as claimed (I will be checking the control panel areas to make sure it has the specs claimed).

Thanks in advance.

[hambubba]

Check the specs, sure. Does it have enough RAM and hard drive? CPU the right speed? Battery pack lasts longer than 20 minutes? Those are major. Barring a motherboard problem, you should be fine. There's other details, like bluetooth, and USB. Any laptop made in the last 4 years will have USB. Bluetooth is optional, you might not need it.

Check to see if the fans work, stuff like that.

[ElectricBarbarella]

for whom and what it is for, it has plenty of harddrive/ram space. Battery came full and seems to be running fine right now. No extra sounds detected (whirring, etc..)..

Just did a complete windows update (has xp), cleaned out the pc, loaded the basic stuff onto it that it needs (firefox, etc..) and so far, it seems to be running fine.

The full on tech-y stuff I am not worried about as this is going to be mainly a internet/school work laptop for my 13 year old. The second one coming is for the 17year old--for the same use.

[ElectricBarbarella]

at the time of the above post, the pc was plugged in. I unplugged it to test the battery and just now had to plug it back in because it went down to 65% in 20 mins time. This means the battery is bad, doesn't it? It fully charged while plugged in and we played some flash games to test the flash installs and it went down to the 65% in that short time.

bad battery?

[stalker]

Originally Posted by ElectricBarbarella

at the time of the above post, the pc was plugged in. I unplugged it to test the battery and just now had to plug it back in because it went down to 65% in 20 mins time. This means the battery is bad, doesn't it? It fully charged while plugged in and we played some flash games to test the flash installs and it went down to the 65% in that short time.

bad battery?

Possibly. It also depends what it's going to do with the next 65%. Maybe it's just that fully charged no longer means fully charged.
I'd run it down to zero (not doing anything important, of course ) and actually time how long it lasts. Check your power save settings and try to have it shutdown at a very low percentage (5 or below) so that it's not safely shutting down when you have 15-20% left and giving you a false negative.
If you get one and a half to two hours out of an old laptop battery, you're probably doing ok.

[ElectricBarbarella]

it said it had 55 minutes left on that 65%... I have it plugged in right now.. I'll fully charge it back up and run it down tomorrow. Power save settings was the one thing I forgot to set.

[Troberg]

Depending on the make and model, there might be a downloadable diagnostics disc which will run through everything on it. I've used such discs on Dell machines (yep, I know, they are crap, and I will not by any more Dells).