Due diligence goes a long way. Here's my story short story.

Back in the summer of 2010 I was a student attending the local college. The ipad one had just came out and Tech in the class room was catching on. Wanting to be more productive in school I decided that I needed either a laptop or one of the new iPads to assist me with my classroom needs.

I had a limited budget at the time so I had to choose between an ipad or a laptop. The iPad was new, hip, had many functions and was still improving. Laptop on the other hand was not as hip or dazzling like an iPad. During this time laptops were slimming down in size to compete with the light weight iPad. HDMI and wireless N was the new kid on the block and Intel were successfully marketing its weak low profile Intel atom into millions of laptops.

After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to go with a laptop. A laptop wasn’t as slick and cool as an iPad but it definitely had more practical utility than the iPad. My decision was made. All that was left to do was to figure out what I wanted and make the purchase. What I wanted was something with lots of RAM, that was lightweight, powerful, but also battery efficient. In addition it needed to have the wireless technology with N band, and Bluetooth capability. It would be a bonus if it came with an independent graphics card. I figured that this build would last me at least a few years.

Now that I decided what I wanted, I had to conduct the hunt. I searched high and low, all sites and every site searching for the build that I wanted. I even tried the custom build option on the a few manufacture’s website but that also was a dead end. My hopes started to get pretty low after a week of searching and having not one result. I started to think that what I wanted didn’t exist and that composition that I asked for was just too unrealistic to ask for. Anything lightweight all had that underpowered Intel Atom chip and definitely did not have an independent video card. Personally I thought that the Atom processor was a scam and not having one in my laptop was a deal breaker.

So far searching for premade laptops with specifications that I required did not bear fruit. Custom made searches via manufacture’s site was a dead end. My last remaining option was to search eBay postings for used or refurbished laptops. On eBay went through many listings under my search criteria. Page after pages came up dry. What I found were either large bulky laptops that were powerful but had terrible battery life or small weak laptops that had great battery life. Neither was what I wanted. Not giving up I continued searching for a couple more days until on the third day I finally stumble on something. This something was everything that I was asking for.

The laptop I found was an HP. It was a refurbished laptop with manufacture warranty. The model was DM3T which was one of the most expensive 13” light weight laptop at the time valued over $1500 with when maxed out. However this model had what I wanted and not the limited options available on the HP website. It had the Intel Core duo 2 chip which no lightweight laptop had at the time so it was rare. It also had 8gb of RAM which was over kill for practical use. It even had an independent 512gb Nvidia graphics card with HDMI output. This too was also rare on a lightweight laptop. In a designer’s mindset it was illogical to have an independent graphics card on lightweight non-gaming laptops. It added weight, consumed more battery, did not complement weak processors and lastly lightweight laptops weren’t designed for serious gaming or heavy duty use. As for the battery life, it was not the best offered at 12 hours for this model but 10 hours of battery life was perfectly acceptable. Lastly it came with the must have latest generation wireless N and Bluetooth technology which was also a must have.

This was everything that I wanted in a laptop. The kicker was that the price tag was only a little over $800. This was almost unbelievable. I expected to pay at least $1300 for this build. Not only did it have an amazing price tag it also came with 3 months of manufacture warranty. This was not seller’s warranty or a third party warranty. It was the manufacturer’s warranty which was pretty much good as gold if anything should ever go wrong. This deal really seemed too good to be true. I literally had to triple and quadruple check everything. Everything checked out, even the seller. The seller had very amazing feedback and lots of it. I figured looked perfect so I figured if I were to get scammed I still had ebay’s buyer protection to back me up. Within the hour I jumped the gun and made my purchase.

A week later the laptop arrived. The packing was perfect and the condition of everything exceeded my expectation. The box was factory sealed and had all the codes. Everything that the box contained was flawless and were in new condition. I couldn’t even tell that this was a refurbished laptop. This was definitely one of my YES! moments.

Fast forward… It is now October 2017 and a bit over 8 years since I had purchased my laptop. It is still very fast, very amazing and still does everything I need to do short of 4k gaming. I've gone through World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, League of Legends and countless school projects. The journey has really been amazing. As for my siblings, in laws and other buddies of mine. All have gone through at least 2 laptops since. One is on his 4th laptop with two being Macbooks Pros with price tags in the thousands. None were ever perfectly happy with their purchase.

Long story short. Due diligence for me really paid off. I managed to score my perfect laptop for way below retail price. 8 years later my laptop is still running as well as it did since I first bought it. I did have to replace the keyboard and battery which was cheap and easy. All in all this is one investment that I am truly proud of.

Anyhow, tell me about your stories and how your hard work and due diligence paid out. I love these kind of stories and would love to hear them. Who knows, maybe we all can learn a thing or two.

Here is a picture of my laptop still kicking it hard and strong.