[Ipg-smz] eBay vendors selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed

Wed Jan 1 04:00:49 UTC 2020

Just ask an iPhone owner who slavishly buys the latest model ever single year 😊

From: Ipg-smz <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org> On Behalf Of Dennisf63 via Ipg-smz
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2019 5:53 PM
To: ipg-smz at netpress.org
Cc: Dennisf63 <dennisf63 at wildblue.net>
Subject: Re: [Ipg-smz] eBay vendors selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed

You young whipper-snappers probably don't remember a time, oh, it was probably back in the 1950s when the term was "planned obsolesence." In them days it was cars, auto-mobiles, when Deetroit was cranking 'em out, adding tail fins and what not, while the Japanese were concentrating on fuel efficient, well built small cars. 

What goes around comes around. Those to don't remember history are condemned to repeat it. 

-- 
Dennis Fowler
P. O. Box 70
Otego, NY 13825
dennisf63 at wildblue.net <mailto:dennisf63 at wildblue.net> 

On 12/31/2019 04:19 PM, Lynn Greiner via Ipg-smz wrote:

It’s all marketing – it’s in companies’ best interest to get people to buy new stuff so they maintain their revenue streams. Thus Y is the “X-killer”. The world is littered with the corpses of last year’s model, if you believe the hype (also, subscription and streaming models are simply revenue tools – I’d rather have my movie on DVD and not be at the mercy of some streaming service). My previous desktop was retired after about 8 or 9 years, after it suffered a catastrophic hardware failure that would have been too expensive to fix. The one before it went 9 years and had to be put aside because replacement parts weren’t available. Current machine is 4, I think – had it for a couple of years before the other desktop died, since I needed Win10 for some things and the vendor refused to support Win10 on the old box. I can run Linux on the new system too, of course – I configured it with a ton of RAM so I could create VMs.

From: Ipg-smz  <mailto:ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org> <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org> On Behalf Of Mark Brownstein via Ipg-smz
Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2019 3:51 PM
To: ipg-smz at netpress.org <mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org> 
Cc: Mark Brownstein  <mailto:IPG at brownstein.com> <IPG at brownstein.com>
Subject: Re: [Ipg-smz] eBay vendors selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed

The whole issue of 'obsolete' has been a bit of a puzzle to me, too. 

Why is it necessary to get the latest and greatest? Why is a phone, for example (maybe an iPhone 6 or a Galaxy S8) that was once the latest and greatest -- and still works fine - suddenly obsolete when a new model comes along? 

Why is Word 10 (which I use to teach a 100 year old nun, and usually use for most of my projects) obsolete - even though it still works fine for me, and meets almost all of my needs? 

The once state-of-the-art (or almost) Dell notebook that you wrote about was hot shit a decade or so ago -- sure, new software may require more resources - but this thing is still powerful, and will do Linux Mint very well. With good desktop apps - and a lot of apps that do things that are similar to the Windows or Mac apps (or some ported across platforms to provide equivalent features and capabilities) - why NOT keep an 'obsolete' machine alive and vital? 

This isn't quite like it was in the mid '90s when the Pentium or 80264 came out, and some apps wouldn't run on an earlier CPU. 

I've been thinking about putting Linux on one of my virtual machines and taking it for a spin.

On 12/31/2019 9:45 AM, Phil Shapiro via Ipg-smz wrote:

  I've noticed several eBay vendors are selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed.  I sometimes buy these

and  resell them to community members at cost.  I'm then able to provide free tech support via my public library job.

          In some ways my job is analogous to an open source Apple genius bar -- although I'm given no scripts of what I can

and can't say. I just give people the best possible advice and support I can. 

         Anyway, there might be an interesting story about Linux finding its way into communities via eBay.  I can.

pass along the vendors names, if anyone might be interested in running with this.

         An interesting side angle to this -- the vendors would not be installing Linux Mint if there were no demand

for it...  Another angle, I installed Linux Mint 19.3xfce on a 2002 Dell Dimension 4550 desktop this week.  Darn

computer feels pretty snappy to me. Without Linux, that computer would be out of commission. With Linux installed,

it could see a few more years of use.

         Too often tech professionals use the word "obsolete" as if it were a factual statement, rather than a statement of opinion.

If you're a refugee from some war torn country, a 2002 computer with Linux installed would be a dream system to have at home.

          If your name were J.K. Rowling - and you were receiving public assistance -- you could use such a computer to write your

first books.

                Phil

-- 

--
Phil Shapiro, pshapiro at his.com <mailto:pshapiro at his.com> 
http://www.his.com/~pshapiro/ <http://www.his.com/%7Epshapiro/> briefbio.html
http://www.twitter.com/philshapiro
http://www.his.com/~pshapiro/stories <http://www.his.com/%7Epshapiro/stories> .menu.html

"Wisdom begins with wonder." - Socrates
"Learning happens thru gentleness."

"We must reinvent a future free of blinders so that we can choose from real options."  David Suzuki

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