I've been offered a macbook of the following spec (Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz, 1GB Memory,80GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD-RW Drive) second hand from a mate for £400… I've quite fancied one for a long time & he's upgraded recently.

However – I know macs hold their value but, is that too expensive when I could get this for £816 – how much better is it?

& apart from ebay is there a mac style singeltrackworld where peeps sell second ones?!

I would say that £400 for that spec from a mate is not a terribly good price. £300 would be nearer the mark.

The refurb shop offers something inbetween http://store.apple.com/uk/product/FC207B/A?mco=MTU5MjkwMjk

Or try here: http://www.scrumpymacs.co.uk/

Bearing in mind you could get 4x the memory and disk space on a new windows laptop for that price, it doesn't sound very good value to me.

p.s. I am not a mac hater. I have a MB pro. But they are over priced.

is that one on the apple refurb store current spec? Just cheaper?

I get easily confused when it comes to computer specs

That spec means it's a late 2006 model. The new one is at least twice as good in every way. That said, it will still do fine for most stuff (mine isn't much younger) and it's trivially easy to drop in more memory or a bigger hard disk.

Your mate is having a laugh at £400 though – they go for no more than £350 on ebay, and even that is too much IMO.

agree with simon thats to expensive worth 300 max imho.
mb pro here bought direct from apple for £750 refurb was cheeper than the macbook i nearly bought from comet.or currys or pc world or john lewis as there allmost all the same price.

Ive got one you can have for £300,needs a new battery

CoreDuo (rather than Core2Duo) are pretty old now. With mates rate i'd be expecting more like £250 – £300

if you don't mind waiting to the end of the month I'll have a G4 17" powerbook for sale. It'll be dirt cheap too…

Billybob if you don't go for any of the stw offers above – could I 2nd dibs please?

Woffle – how much will your G4 powerbook be?

He's asking too much for a four year old laptop. You'll need a bigger h/drive, which for my seven year old PowerBook is £140 with installation, cloning the existing drive onto a 350Gb, and another gig of RAM could be around £60-70. If he won't drop the price, go for a good refurb or the one offered above. They're expensive computers, to be sure, but looked after they give years of service. There's a Mac tower at work that I used at a previous job that was bought new in '97…

£250-£300 tops for the above. £400 is taking the piss. I'd be looking at 4-450 for my much better spec'd MBP if I was selling it on (core 2 2.16, 3gig ram, 500gb HD 15")