I need to be able to afford a computer! Help!?

Question

First, getting a job will not work, since I have no transportation and I live 50 miles from the nearest city. I have several small job cleaning homes, and I need to make 1000$ or more to afford a laptop in time for college (which for me, begins next June) Help!

those are all good suggestions, but i forgot to mention something. Getting a loan wll not work, because druing college, I will not be able to get a job to repay said loans. On top of a full course load, I'll be part of the Student Work Program to pay my room and board

ok..and it has to be a laptop (the school requires it), with win xp home

Answer 1

You can do payment plans through Dell, and I also believe if you can prove you are a student they will give a 10-15% discount on the computers. You can always use the ones at the school library as well until you can afford one! =) Good luck with school!

Answer 2

If you know anyone in your area that fixes computers for a reasonable price, ask them to help you look for one on eBay.

You can get some pretty good deals these days on laptops that have minor issues and can usually be fixed easily. I am looking at getting a 2.2ghz laptop with 512MB RAM from EBay for less than $300 total right now. ($200 for the laptop, and about $100 in extra parts to fix it). Then again, I run my own small business fixing computers so no extra labor. But I would only charge about $100 to do the work.

The other thing is to keep an eye out for sales around Christmas time. The Core 2 Duo processors are starting to come out in laptops right now, so the current generation of laptops will be going on sale quickly in the next few months.

Remember the news stories last year about the $300 laptop at Walmart? Well, they were fairly decent laptops for the price, but only about 20 per store. They sold them on Black Friday, the morning after Thanksgiving.

Also, check with your school (either high school now or college in the spring) or you parents work. Many schools and businesses offer no interest buying programs for students. In fact, if you know anyone that works in the education industry, they probably have that program available to them. Maybe you could arrange to buy one through them?

Answer 3

and maybe a lap top isn't necessarily what you want, if you just need a computer they have small desktop computers about the size of a toaster available and they tend too be cheaper than laptops also look into used computer outlets i find much better deals on computers there than i would on e-bay,and you don't have to have a lot of know how too put a computer together, plug and play bios's make it easy --and sometimes you can put together a computer much cheaper than buying one.
all you have to do is put the right cards in the right slots on a mother board and they are readily marked and everything thing has it's own place too go so you can't mess up, i know nothing about computers at all!! and my computer is a Mish mash of new and used parts -- for just a little over 400 $
here are my specs --
syntax mother board 266 fsb -- new still in the box but obsolete
2.4 ghz amd athlon - used
128 mb ATI radeon video - used
2 - 512 mb -- pc2100 RAM ddr - used
cd -rom - X56 spin - used
CD/R - R/W 48 x 16 x 48 - new
12 in one multicard reader - new
antec case w/ 350 watt power supply - new
120 gb maxtor hard drive - used
15 inch flat panel LCD monitor - new
this is good enough to let me run all current software.!!
put together by just me

Answer 4

If you have several small jobs, then use one of the jobs as a computer job. Take the pay from that job, put it in an account and don't touch it until you have enough to get your computer. I did this one time, and before I knew it I had the money for what I needed plus. When you strive for something the money just seems to be there, to be added to your account. Good luck.
One more little thing, use a picture, and every morning say to the picture. 'I will have you'

Answer 5

You may be aimming higher than you need cost-wise. Check Pricegrabber.com for lists of prices and retailers.

I looked on Buy.com and found this laptop which would be a very good option for most people:

http://www.buy.com/prod/Lenovo_3000_C100_Notebook_1_5GHz_Celeron_M_370_512MB_DDR2_80GB_DVD_RW/q/loc/101/202383976.html

Some other Lenovo options can be found in an expanded listing:

http://www.buy.com/retail/searchresults.asp?querytype=home&qu=lenovo+3000&qxt=home&dclksa=1

Also, if you keep checking for sales, Staples (Staples.com), Best Buy, and Circuit City regularly have good sales. I recently got two very good Compaq laptops for work under $600 including case.

I know it doesn't help with earning money, but at least you have some less expensive options than you may have known about.

Answer 6

Apply for a student loan
A laptop is considered necessary in most colleges, so you can use the loan money to buy one

Answer 7

Capital One will give you a credit card, you can put some of the money on that and from now until june you can save the rest from your cleaning job. SAVING IS YOUR GOAL. so stop doing the little things that cost money.

Answer 8

Dell lets you finance a laptop with affordable monthly payment plans. If you have good credit you should check it out.

Answer 9

http://www.pcretro.com

Good second hand laptops for less than $300 to $500 depending on how much horespower you're looking for.

Answer 10

ask your parents to pay ya for chores in the house !! I always do that !! internet money making is a con !! u jst loose so dnt bother with tht !!