Last night I wrote the first part of this post. I just really needed to sleep already so I decided to make this a 2-part post.

So as I said, I started looking for a laptop that would just be around $100. I really wanted it to be a maximum of $120 but with specs that I’m comfortable with. I wanted the laptop to be on Windows 7, at least 1GB RAM, at least 150 GB hard drive. Just good enough for using Office applications, blogging, internet surfing and not so much on gaming and videos.

I checked Retrevo, Brads Deals and daily deals sites hoping that I could score one that fits my criteria. But sadly, everything is at least $200. And the $200 laptops on those sites don’t even fit some of my criteria. So I realized that my best bet would be to get a second hand laptop. If only I could afford the smallest gaming laptop. I hear they are brilliantly fast and easy to use.

Craigslist was 1st of the 2 sites I checked and the results was just like the other sites I’ve checked. And then I checked Ebay.

What’s good about Ebay is that almost all laptop auctions start cheap and there are some items that don’t have a reserve price. A reserve price is the minimum price a seller will take.

I must say the experience was kind of frustrating. I decided I would only bid a maximum of $100, or $130 if shipping is included. There were times that I would be the highest bidder but that would change soon because someone would always outbid me.

So I figured the best way to do it is to just put all the laptops I like on my Ebay Watch List and come back to them just before the auction ends. If I see that the price is above my price theshold, then I delete it from my Watch List. If it’s within my budget, then I wait until the auction is just a few seconds away from ending and then I bid. I just need to keep on hitting the “Refresh” link (not the actual Refresh button on my browser but the Ebay Refresh link) to make sure that the price shown as the highest bid is MY bid price.

So given this strategy, I was able to get an HP Mini 210-2100 netbook for $89 plus $30 shipping, for a total of $119! And this is sooo within my budget! But I haven’t received it yet because I just paid for it last Friday.

You know what’s even better? Because of all the stuff I wrote on making money online, I actually just paid $11.30 from our bank account! The other $107.70 was from my earnings at SponsoredTweets, Escalate Network, Blogsvertise and Swagbucks!

So I’m really excited to receive the laptop in the mail! I figured, if this laptop lasts me a year, then I already got my money’s worth.