Refurbished Aopen 1557GL coming... Review Soon

I decided to go very cheap and take a risk. I bought an aopen 1557gl refurbished notebook w/out cpu/ram/hdd from newegg.com. For $480, I got this:

cpu support up to 2 ghz dothan
15" xga (sxga+ was nearly $80 more, not worth it IMO)
i855pm
2 sodimm slots for up to ddr 333
ati 9600 64mb (it could even be ati 9700 since aopen upgraded models)
battery for 4+ hrs

I already have a spare 1.3 ghz pentium M and can borrow ram from my bro's laptop to test. If all goes well, I plan to add 1 gb pc2700 and a 40gb 5400rpm samsung drive. My plan is to get a great deal on a self build laptop for under $800. I already put together an ECS G551 for my bro and it turned out pretty well. Hope it doesn't come DOA.

What I mean is that the specs are sketchy. I emailed newegg and they told the specs are what is given by the manufacturer and these specs haven't changed at all since the refurbs of these started appearing. And seeing as how the newer 1557's are being made with ati 9700 chips, there is a chance that it may have a 9700 in there instead of a 9600.

I just got the barebone kit today and it came in brown box w/ laptop, us keyboard, battery, ac adapter, cd + manuals, hdd tray, and no optical drive.

It had an ABS computer sticker on the box, so thats probably where the original owner purchased it from and returned it to. Then it must have went back to Aopen to be "fixed" and went to newegg.com and into my hands.

I took my spare 1.3 ghz pentium M and my bros 256mb pc2700 sodimm stick and it booted fine. It booted the cpu at 1.3 ghz, unlike my bros ECS notebook which only could get that thing to 600 mhz max no matter what, even speedswitchxp didn't work then. No logo stickers to determine what radeon chip was in there.

Later I pulled the 2.5" hitachi 4.2k rpm drive from my bros laptop and popped in in this one. It was able to boot into windows, but asked about all this new hardware and driver stuff. I ignored most of that and quickly installed omega ati drivers. I had high hopes for a ati 9700/128mb, but was dissapointed it came with a ati 9600/64mb. Oh well, its still a good deal, just not as great as it could have been with a mr9700.

Closer inspection and I noticed 1 dead pixel and one bad pixel. =(
Oh well, I get what I pay for right? Its still ok since it was soo cheap.
Hopefully thats the only reason why it got returned by the original owner.

These are some benchmark results:

Sisoft Sandra Memory
2150mb/s
2150mb/s

3dmark2001SE
9250 3dmarks

I am still arguing over whether I should have coughed up the extra $80 for sxga+, but its stupid now seeing as everything turned out much better than DOA and its pretty much a keeper for only $480. Now its time to add hdd, optical drive, 512mb ram (another 512mb in the future), and 2200bg wifi. Gotta look hard for good deals on these items now. I already know where to get a 40 gb 5400rpm drive for $80 and the 2200bg wifi card for $30.

I believe the optical drive it uses is the QSI 24x cd burner/ 8x dvd combo. I have found those drives on ebay for auction, but the face plates will be different.