Good, working laptop NEEDED!

[Lady Royce]

Hello all at The MN Renaissance Festival,

I work and camp at the MN Renaissance Festival (I camp & stay put from a week before till a week after fest.) and I am in DIRE NEED of a GOOD, WORKING laptop computer that I can use to get on the internet with and dump photos to.

IF anyone here has upgraded to a new computer and still has their old one that they would be willing to unload, would you either contact me at donna_royce@yahoo.com OR find me at "The Foxes Den" at the MN Renaissance Festival camp grounds.
If you come looking for me at the camp grounds. My tent is on the VERY FAR right (As you face it.) of the camp ground office, towards the back and at the top of the hill and I fly a British flag above my tent.

Thank you for your help and Be Well.
Lady Donna

[Lady Royce]

Do they have internet in the campground or are you going B/B ?

  Sir Majikboxman,

  This is a bit of a long letter, but I do hope it gives you all the information you need to perhaps help me out with getting the laptop that I am in DESPERET need of.

  At the MN festival campgrounds, we have Wi/Fi. The grounds manager has it and pays for it by the month and the campers with Wi/Fi computers pay him about $25.00 (It may have gone up this season?) for the access code and password for the entire two month season.
  I am one of the lucky six campers that camp in a tent that also has access to power I can run to my tent and I pay the manager $25.00 a season for this. So I am able to keep my cell phone (A T-moble pay as you go phone.) charged and I have a small dorm. fridge (No more waisted money on ice!) as well. So I can keep a laptop charged and run it on AC when I am not running around the festival grounds.

  The problem I have is that I live on SSI (Social Security Disability) of only $691.00 a month and that DOES NOT let me get any kind of good computer. Even the tower here at home is a cast off I repaired and it is rather OLD. (It is a DELL tower that was made in 1998 and runs "Windows ME!") I can not even think about getting a new tower, let alone a new laptop.
 
  I THOUGHT I had a good deal on a good used laptop this past spring. We have what they call a "100 mile yard sale" (A bunch of different yard sales in a 100 mile area.) here around Durand, WI each year and I found a 1998 "IBM Thinkpad" at one place for $50.00 and the seller said it worked. He said he did not have the original OS start up disks for it, but he had back up copies of them he would give me for the laptop.
  So I gave up $50.00 of my food money for the month to get it and when I got it home and plugged in and fired up, I got 3 error messages. So I called IBM and gave them the error messages and I was told that the hard drive and memory stick had been swapped out for much smaller ones and there was no OS on it!   
  SO! When I tried to load the OS copies he gave me on to it, THE RUDDY THINGS WERE BLANK! (I checked them on my tower.) So I took the blasted thing and the blank disks back to this guy and told him what I found out from IBM, told him about the blank disks and asked for my money back. He cussed me a good one, laughed in my face and told me to get off his property or he would call the cops! So what could I do? I was stuck for it!
  The sick thing was, he had ANOTHER laptop JUST LIKE the one he sold me out in the same spot that this one was in when I saw it. It was very clear to me that he had a mess of them (The Mother only knows how many this jerk had.) and that he was cheating anyone that NEEDED a good used laptop. And there was not a bloody thing anyone could do about it because it was a yard sale and everything at a yard sale is sold "AS IS!". 
  So now, all I have is a $50.00 door stop (I do not know anything about repairing laptops. Towers and desktops I can deal with. Not laptops.) and I can not do a ruddy thing about it! All I can do is wait for The Mother to deal this jerk some bad karma someday for what he has done to me and others.

  The reason I need a good laptop is 1) I am writing a fantasy story based around the MN festival and I need to keep working on it during my days off while I am camping there. 2) I need to keep in contact with my daughter on the net and check my emails. And 3) I have an older digital camera that I need to dump the photos I take each weekend to the computer and clear the camera's chip.

  I could care less if the laptop I get has a DVD/CD Player/Burner on it. (It would be nice to have, but not necessary.) I would like it to have a normal CD player (So I can run some programs, read the basic copy of my story I am working on, play my music or play a couple of games on it when I am relaxing.) or perhaps a CD player/burner on it so I can save my story and photos as well as run programs, play music or games.
  BUT! BUT! And then again BUT! It does need to have not only the PCMI slots, but one or two USB ports so I can jack in my camera or a memory card reader and a Wi/Fi device.

  If you can help me or know of someone that can, I would be most grateful.

  Thank you for your time and Be Well.
  Lady Donna