Can anyone clarify whether or not a market for refurbished laptops exists in Taiwan? Or am I better off just buying them off eBay from sellers with good reputations as I’ve seen suggested in a few places? I’m talking about PCs and PC laptops rather than Macs. I spent a few hours wandering around the Guanghua digital plaza, but everything there appears to be brand-new.
I’ve seen a few things for sale on Yahoo auctions such as refurbished Lenovo ThinkPads, but lack the language skills to tell how reputable the sellers are.
Good to know, but I’m not sure what I need, at least not yet. I’m a Mac user, and hence no longer entirely familiar with the PC market, but basically I need to run one single piece of PC software, and therefore need a PC to do it: so either a cheap (very cheap) laptop without it being so cheap as to be junk, or possibly some kind of mini desktop pc that can be controlled through a MacBook. How much would it cost me if you had, say, a Lenovo Thinkpad (for instance) with 8Gb RAM and a 128Gb SSD?
I’m honestly not sufficiently qualified to be sure if what I’m saying entirely makes sense: the software I want to run is Dragon Dictation. The company behind it stopped supporting Mac last year.
There’s a store selling second hand laptops/PC/cameras/watches/phones…in Guanghua. Right next to Chatime tea shop on the second floor. I’ve bought several items there over the years and never had a problem. When facing the shop, you’ll see a staircase on your right. Just go up.
Chatime Taipei Guanghua
No. 6號, Section 1, Xinsheng South Road, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City, 100
02 2395 8559 https://goo.gl/maps/VyJbkavHMSh2s8dv8
have you thought about running windows on the mac using bootcamp?
or an emulation program like WINE. i have to use a piece of corporate software for work that only runs on windows. I have it set up on a virtual desktop on the company server and just remote into it.
My mandarin skills are frankly minimal to non-existent, so it’s not too surprising that I missed it. Thanks for letting me know: I can check that out now.
Thanks. Actually that’s what I originally intended to do. I have two 2012 MacBook Pros, one of which I upgraded to a 256Gb SSD last year.
I Tried to install windows via Boot Camp on the older machine, and managed to fry it somehow, Or at least it no longer starts up. While I was at the digital plaza I checked out repair costs, and it’s probably not worth it. Upgraded or not, I’m loathe to try and do the same thing on my remaining MacBook.
That leaves me with two options: either get a second cheap PC to run the software I need, or go the whole hog and buy myself a brand-new or recently refurbished Mac on which I could perhaps run windows through parallels.
To be frank, it’s all starting to get a little bit expensive.
I’ve tried Wine in the past, but I tend to find it too much hassle and/or complicated in terms of making it work, and it proved more trouble than it was worth. Someone with greater computer knowledge might have less problems than me.
Bootcamp is possible, but after trying to do that with one Macbook and apparently killing it, I’m loathe to try on my other Macbook. I’ve also tried running Windows under Parallels, but on a 2012 Macbook, even with a SSD, it reduces the machine to a slow crawl.
but you can try it and see if is good enough