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

[Mark Brownstein]

'Like a liquor store for alcoholics.'

Thanks for the warning. Fortunately, the University that's just up the 
street from me auctions its stuff off. This beats the hell out of 
walking through a room full of interesting stuff that I can do without 
and impulsively buying it (although a desktop or good notebook that I 
can get a hard drive for, and install Linux or Windows onto wouldn't be 
THAT bad...)


On 1/2/2020 6:26 AM, Tom Henderson via Ipg-smz wrote:
>
> I find some of the truly oddest gear there. Some of it doesn't last 
> long, and you have to be able to make a decision spontaneously. Brand 
> new trainers in my size for $12.50 is a no-brainer. A used Dell system 
> for my brother on a "flash sale" was a no-brainer. 8GB/i7-gen8/1TB/no 
> monitor for $80 was simple; they're required to put new drives in all 
> their machines as the old drives are destroyed. There was an enormous 
> power supply, suitable for powering serious radio gear that I waffled 
> on. They wanted $45, about 5% of its retail price. Wasn't guaranteed. 
> Should've bought it. I know the guy that did, and he's mindlessly 
> happy with it as it worked and had never been deployed.
>
> There are gruesome amounts of dreck there, too. Old text books with 
> moths. Dorm room art prints of Venice, twenty of them. Furniture from 
> the Hoover administration. There used to be endless bicycles in 
> various states of repair until they donated them to the local 
> community bike project, Several of those bikes were worth >$5K, but 
> were abandoned by repatriating students that didn't want to ship them 
> to Lahore or Shenzen.
>
> There are servers, but the problem is: no hard drives, by policy. 
> There's lots of Cisco gear, but no passwords, and so must be fully 
> reset and re-programmed from scratch. They use proprietary WiFi APs, 
> so none of that. There are miles and furlongs of cable/cabling, audio 
> gear (mixers, outdoor gear, mics, etc) but not musical instruments, 
> save pianos. There's grand and a baby grand right now; the baby grand 
> looks as though it sat outside in the weather for years, a Baldwin.
>
> If you're a hoarder, stay away. It's like a liquor store for 
> alcoholics in this regard.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On 1/2/20 6:25 AM, Tom Geller via Ipg-smz wrote:
>> On 2 Jan 2020, at 02:41, Tom Henderson via Ipg-smz 
>> <ipg-smz at netpress.org <mailto:ipg-smz at netpress.org>> wrote:
>>
>>> The local university has a surplus store. It's often filled with 
>>> size 18 Adidas track shoes.
>>
>> Oh, man, the one at the U. of Cincinnati was my favorite Thursday 
>> afternoon hangout. So much great stuff... especially for lovers of 
>> vintage computers. That's where I got the VT-100 dumb terminal and 
>> 300 baud modem that got me reliably online in 1987.
>>
>> ---
>> Tom Geller  *  Writer & Video/journalist  * http://tomgeller.com
>>        Rotterdam, The Netherlands, +31 (0)6 87071468
>>             Oberlin, Ohio  *  +1-415-317-1805
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> -- 
> Tom Henderson
> ExtremeLabs, Inc.
> +1 317 250 4646
> Twitter: @extremelabs
> Skype: extremelabsinc
>
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