[Ipg-smz] eBay vendors selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed
Tom Henderson
thenderson at extremelabs.com
Thu Jan 2 01:41:30 UTC 2020
The local university has a surplus store. It's often filled with size 18
Adidas track shoes.
But if you plead your case, you might be granted perfectly serviceable
Dells or Mac-somethings. There are a few HP laptops here and there.
They come with Windows Home, and a new disk. The same store has a drive
munching machine, free to faculty. Jaws.
The local community radio station where I volunteer now has eight really
nice Dells, and almost enough decent Mac Minis. There is a fat SAN/NAS
system, and its various backups.
These near-gifts have made a tremendous difference.
So have the unused size 15 Adidas running shoes in my closet.
Some days, everything (with very few exceptions) is 50% off if you're a
teacher.
Then I'm reminded of my tax dollars at work. Universities aren't
necessarily monetarily efficient. Nothing there, fortunately (OK, 15
pallets of athletic shoes make my mind reel), is too tawdry.
Tom
On 1/1/20 12:55 PM, Lynn Greiner via Ipg-smz wrote:
> Same here. We have a lot of geriatric but functional tech in use.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ipg-smz <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org> On Behalf Of Christine Hall via Ipg-smz
> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2019 11:09 PM
> To: ipg-smz at netpress.org
> Cc: Christine Hall <christine at fossforce.com>
> Subject: Re: [Ipg-smz] eBay vendors selling used laptops with Linux Mint installed
>
> In my house, it's not obsolete until we say it's obsolete.
>
> Christine Hall
> Publisher & Editor
> FOSS Force: Keeping tech free
> http://fossforce.com
>
> On 12/31/19 11:00 PM, Lynn Greiner via Ipg-smz wrote:
>> 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 <ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org>
>> <mailto: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 <IPG at brownstein.com> <mailto: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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>
--
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc
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