mine died a week or so ago,the screen went black and stayed that way.
thinking about the hassle of getting another and setting it up and trying to remember the websites and passwords i used was a major problem.now i don't really use a computer for anything but email and entertainment so i can just work along to get back to square one.but if you really needed one if you lived in some sort of danger zone,fire,storm,earthquake and your computer went down then having a cheap replacement all loaded and ready to go then you could be back in action in minutes.

Look at WOOT.com, they have some at some low prices that will do what you need.

I buy laptops for work stuff, because I have to be compatible with the Microsoft universe, and have plausible deniability security wise (i.e., I exercised due diligence in a way your IT guy will understand and accept as valid).

For everything else, computing hardware and software is free. I kid you not.

First, ask a favour and find an external monitor to plug into. The guts of your laptop may be just fine, even though the display has gone kaput. All your data, passwords, etc. are almost surely intact on the internal hard drive. Any external LCD monitor under 20" is basically free for the taking. You could operate with that for a long, long time.

Second, the hard drive from you old laptop can be plugged into another compatible machine, and you can retrieve all your stuff.

Third, for the truly hardcore, there are free laptops out there everywhere. Just ask around and you will be surprised. Perfectly good hardware and hard drives, but the operating system is some older version of Windows that nobody wants. Wipe the drive with DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke), which completely overwrites all the old stuff multiple times. Install a good Linux flavour like Linux Mint (my favourite), which is so close to Windows it's perfectly intuitive, and you are fully operational for free.

Fourth, though Authority doesn't care for it, you can scrounge perfectly good components from recycling bins. Waste is evil, IMO. But you will need to be very discreet, and have a little tech savvy. And wipe that hard drive with DBAN. Do you really want to know what's on there? Yikes.

I had a similar problem with my old laptop and used a Thermaltake BlacX Duet eSATA USB Dual Hard Drives Docking Station to transfer the files from the old HD to a new laptop. Worked for me, no affiliation.

I haven’t used DBAN but I have used Eraser to erase individual files and folders. I’ve never needed to wipe a complete disc, but I can see why that might be advantageous. Eraser works inside windows. Once installed, you can right click on an individual file, files or folder (such as the entire My Documents folder) and select erase from the pull-down. The level of Data Sanitization is up to you. I set it up to a simple three pass method (DoD 5220.22), but that can be changed to Gutmann or one of many other protocols, and allows you to erase a file and replace it for “plausible deniability” (whatever that means). I’m not concerned with NSA or the FBI going after my files, so something that is gone from a casual inspection is good enough. A single pass of 0’s, 1’s or pseudorandom 1’s & 0’s would probably be plenty for most needs. More passes takes more time.


Were I to wipe a drive, I would use the DoD 5220.22 protocol for individual files that I really wanted gone, and then I’d reformat which as I understand uses a single pass of 0’s (as in “Write Zero”).

As stated, I’m a user, not a developer and it’s free.

Or a tablet - I use a kindle fire. Cheap, portable back up.
(Also, you know, back up your stuff)

Keep in mind that if you are wiping data from an SSD rather than magnetic media, use only tools designed to wipe SSDs. I would suggest physical destruction is the most likely to work the way you would like.

lots of good advice here.i did order a new large monitor because this new laptop seems to have lots of power and i'm watching stuff like nexflix and youtube and want to see it on a larger screen.

I always buy refurbished business laptops. Big companies use them for three years then sell them. I pick them up at Microcenter and similar for $200-$250 and run them for 3-6 more years. I wipe the drive and install Linux as soo as I buy one. The 6 year old laptop I have at home with only 4G of ram running Linux is soo much faster than the 1 year old laptop at work with 16G of ram stuck running Windows.

Talk of microcenter reminding me of these

http://www.microcenter.com/product/439773/tw70ca17_tablet_-_black

Has two usb (micro and full) so can power it and plugin a keyboard if need to type a lot.