ebay can be the poor man's friend..... by 6IXSTRINGJACK

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

ebay can be the poor man's friend.....

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Friday, August 22, 2014 19:15
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VIEWED: 1818
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Friday, August 15, 2014 7:34 AM

My netbook died. I went to sleep, it went to sleep.... I woke up and it was dead. I ripped her apart and learned that Laptops are nothing like Desktops... If it wasn't officially broke before I hacked it up, it most certainly was now......

Honestly, I likely jumped to drastic measures before doing the rational, but that's how I have fun, so whatever....

i lucked into an OBO offer for a laptop. 3GB DDR2 ram, AMD 1.6 Athalon processor, 250GB HD, 15" screen, wireless internet....

It's not all that inferior to the desktop that I put together, at least not like most bargain Netbooks, especially my old one..... I bet I could actually connect to my old-school projection screen from this and play HD videos. I know they would be true 1080HD, but at least they'll play right instead of having audio/video sync issues.

All for $100, including shipping that only ended up taking 3 days.... ;)

Just gotta install my own Windows on it and it's ready to go :)

My only regret is that I didn't buy all 4 of them.......

I actually had put out a "call to arms" to find me a reasonable price for a laptop/netbook after it happened. Less than an hour this was bought and paid for and 3 days later it made it here and it checks out perfectly and is now going to be be reprogrammed.... :) and/or :(

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Saturday, August 16, 2014 10:03 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Can do ya one better.
See, big tech companies hate maintaining a technical support/maintainence dept, it's bloody expensive and since all the cert tests rely on buzzword sales knowledge with zero practical experience actually FIXING shit, generally they're staffed with all thumbs best buy rejects anyways...
So what they do, and it's actually cheaper for them on economy of scale, is pitch the computers when the warranty runs out, you see ?

Now, once upon a time, they paid a disposal fee for this, given the components are not exactly biodegradeable, and so when some smart guy rolled up in a truck and offered to take all that stuff away for free, allowing them to pocket the disposal fee, nobody asked any questions and it was all good - and RAWA got some pretty state-of-the-art (for fucking Afghanistan, that is, which dun take much) equipment for free.

Of course, since then the system has changed, and a lot of companies sell their pitch-outs on consignment, you get no warranty, just a basic guarantee that it works when YOU get it, and usually but not always they wipe the drives before shipping out, right ?

So basically you have lightly used, slightly older PCs and Laptops out there somewhere dirt fucking cheap, but where ?

Well, right here, of course.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_tlc.asp?CatI
d=4936&srkey=off%20lease

You shoulda seen the big bosses face when I pointed out we could replace the ancient, dying desktop in the office with one having quadruple the specs for a mere sixty bucks, he all but danced a jig.

So take note, ehe ?

-Frem

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Saturday, August 16, 2014 3:29 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Hey Frem.

That's interesting, but it makes sense. Most of the low-end to middle-of-the road PCs/Laptop systems are put together with a bunch of cheap parts and volume license Windows operating systems. Just as you can't take that version of Windows with you to another PC when it dies, you can't really use too many of the internal parts on another PC, or it wouldn't really be worthwhile to cannabalize much anyhow. This is even more true for Laptops than Desktops because of their propriatery nature. (I've got some good parts with that VAIO netbook, but I'll probably end up just throwing it all out except the hard drive since I don't know anybody who would want 1GB of old DDR2 memory).

I think this guy must have gotten his hands on 4 identical ACER laptops from a local small company that just upgraded their machines. I was thinking that he must have either got them for free or he couldn't have paid more than 20 bucks a piece for them.

There's no way he would have sold it to me for $100 bucks with FedEx shipping included unless it cost him almost nothing. I'm sure he had to spend some time cleaning it and reinstalling the volume license OS that came with it originally.

Perusing your link to Tiger Direct, I still think I got quite a bargain compared to their prices, but I do admit that I got lucky that it works exactly as stated. At least when you buy one from Tiger you know that you have a short hassle-free window to return it if it came broken.

I really lucked out. This thing looks brand new... not a scratch or blemish on it. I've never owned a laptop before, and I don't think I can go back to a netbook since the screen on this bad boy is twice as big as the netbook was. It doesn't hurt that there is 3 Times the horsepower under the hood and it only cost me about 20% of what the netbook cost me 4 years ago.

Shop around people, and don't be afraid of buying used or refurbished.

Computers are so advanced today that you probably don't need anything more in a PC than what I just spent 100 bucks on. Sure, it won't play high end games or BluRay movies, but if I wanted a BluRay player I'd buy one for my TV, and I don't really like PC gaming all that much.

I was actually going to buy another one at that price just to have a spare, but by the time I got mine he already sold the other three :(

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, August 17, 2014 1:09 AM

ELVISCHRIST

My next PC won't be.

I'll likely go Samsung Note Tab Pro 12".

Samsung is out-Appling Apple. But these days, who isn't?

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Sunday, August 17, 2014 1:25 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

6-ix

Laptops have notoriously bad cooling. Don't keep yours on under warm conditions (> 75F) or reduced airflow, or you may end up frying something.

SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, August 17, 2014 2:06 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Feh, I build a PC once every ten years, but I build em to LAST that ten years.
Current issue is a hand-built custom quad-core, 12gigs of RAM, dual terabyte drives in a hybrid RAID system, external seagate goflex 1Tb drive for data which needs to be mobile, graphics and sound processing in the same scale.

This thing will still curbstomp most Alienware products, and I built it in 2009, mind.

No worries about cooling here, neither, CPU, Vidcard, mainboard have their own fans, twin fans in the top of the case, one in the front, and a 14" sideblower with pretty lights on it.

Ironically though, most of the games I play on this beastie are retro stuff I run through DOSBOX.

-F

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Sunday, August 17, 2014 2:10 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

AHA! I see you scoped out the heat issue a long time ago.

Kudos to you!

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Sunday, August 17, 2014 9:55 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by FREMDFIRMA:

Feh, I build a PC once every ten years, but I build em to LAST that ten years.
Current issue is a hand-built custom quad-core, 12gigs of RAM, dual terabyte drives in a hybrid RAID system, external seagate goflex 1Tb drive for data which needs to be mobile, graphics and sound processing in the same scale.

This thing will still curbstomp most Alienware products, and I built it in 2009, mind.

No worries about cooling here, neither, CPU, Vidcard, mainboard have their own fans, twin fans in the top of the case, one in the front, and a 14" sideblower with pretty lights on it.

Ironically though, most of the games I play on this beastie are retro stuff I run through DOSBOX.

-F

Kudos to you for getting them to last that long. I guess I just worked the shite out of them and they failed on me. twice in the last nearly 20 years.....

I did once put the same sounblaster card in two upgrades. I did scratch my head when DDR2 memory didn't fit in the DDR3 slot......

I'm only reaching the price point that justifies me spending that kind of money on a system I don't need :)

I'm playing Clouds of Xeen on my XBox DOSBox emulator now.

I love playing old games from DOS with a joystick.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014 11:03 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Heh...

Hey Frem...

I wish I could say that I only made 2 computers so far since I've started building them, but even though they cost money I end up with a far superior machine and some knowledge about the new stuff to boot.

I got me a quad-core AMD FX quad-core with 16gb memory. I'm only rocking 4 small hard drives that don't even make 1TB though, so space can be an issue if I don't do some semi-annual spring cleaning.

I don't play any games on it though... I just like being able to have 187 firefox tabs open at a time while i'm drinking and my mind wants to go to a billion places at once without waiting for the computer to catch up...

Don't get me wrong, I play plenty of old school games, but they're all done from my modded XBox with a control pad. I prefer to kick back and relax on my couch when playing games instead of being huddled on an office chair to play them with a mouse and full keyboard.

I've actually recently started playing Clouds of Xeen on the Box. "The Isles of Terra" was an amazing game for an OCD completionist like me when it came out on the Super Nintendo back in the early/mid 90's. I didn't even know there was a whole lot more to the series and I'm only now finally playing them.

I wish they were all ported to SNES though. They made that game work perfectly with a controller with no need for a mouse after you figured it out. When I'm playing DOSBOX on a console I have to use the damned right analog stick to control the "mouse". It sucks at first, but when you get a hang of it it's not all that bad. :)

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014 11:16 AM

FREMDFIRMA

You should try "Betrayal at Krondor" then, you'd like it I think.
Can be freely downloaded as the original publisher voluntarily relinquished the license making it effectively public domain freeware.

-F

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014 11:46 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I remember having the shareware game but it was too hard on the system i had so i never played it much.

Is this all D&D type stuff. I never played any of those games growing up, but maybe the video games were the "gateway drug" ;)

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014 12:11 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Speaking of old DOS games that we have nostalgia for.....

I really can't play DOOM anymore, although that's the game that really got me into computer systems..... I was so excited to own the first SHAREWARE mission of DOOM that I bought at the computer-bodega next to the comicbook shop that shouldn't have been selling SHAREWARE diskettes to kids that were legally supposed to be given as free....

I didn't know or care about laws back then. (Apparently, neither did any of the tax-collecting officials in my hometown).

All I knew is that for 3 bucks I had a game on my own computer that I've coveted for the last 6 months on my friend's computer.

There was no internet back then. There was no torrent sites.....

If you played a game on your computer it was because somebody gave you the goddamned physical disk to install it.

Anyways....

I was so high that I was finally going to "own" the SHAREWARE version of this game that I let him sell me into another 3 bucks of my re-allocated lunch money on another game called RAPTOR.

It's not another horrible game about Jurassic Park...

Remember 1941? (The arcade/port, I mean?)

It's 1941 on stereroids... (cause things weren't "on crack or meth" when that came out)

Long story short.....

I think you'd like this game. Maybe not as much as I do because you weren't only like 12 years old the first time you played it, but I can't imagine any kid saying they didn't like this game. Even one in their 60's ;)

I haven't played DOOM in about 10-15 years.....

I probably play Raptor once every 5 years for a few hours for the nostalgia.

I can't even do that for early Final Fantasy games.......

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014 12:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Something about that old-school MIDI music too man.....

I doubt the kids would get it, but anyone who stared blankly into an old school IBM monitor when they were 5 years old and didn't hear "real" computer music until they were nearly in high school.......

MIDI was the Pied Piper of the early 90's in my "burrough" ;)

EDITED TO ADD:

Wow.... "GAMES" are awesome today. I'm sorry I was hermitized when the whole guitar hero/rock band thing went on. I would have been a goddamned allstar on the vocals..... :)

I've never played keyboard, but i know about guitar tabs. I WISH i had guitar tabs this accurate.

You won't learn shit about music by mastering how it's presented in the game, but that sure as hell can't be a bad start for a musical savant.....

Step outside yourself and learn a real instrument or learn how to sing.

What's the worst that could happen?

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Wednesday, August 20, 2014 2:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Hey Frem,

I finally got the computer one of my "work moms" was saying doesn't work anymore and she can't get onto the internet at all. She says everything works, but she can't get online.

I'm REALLLLLLY hoping that everything actually does work and I don't have to give her bad news.....

She doesn't care about anything on the machine or if i install a new OS (not that she even gets that), she just wants to be able to get into email and whatever else she used to do. Both of her sons are pretty awesome and I worked with one of them for a while. They don't know the first thing about computers though :)

I told her to just bring the box and I'll handle the rest. When she asked me what it would cost and I told her don't worry about it the smile was priceless.

I'm only hoping now that she was right that "everything was working" and it doesn't end up being a "parts problem". I don't want to just throw good money down the drain replacing parts on an old eMachine from BB. If that were the case, sight unseen, I believe I could just give her the Frankenstein computer I have stashed away if my Grams ever changes her mind and it would be better. ;)

Looking forward to the project, and from what she tells me I think I can have it fixed in 4 hours, while only having to pay attention for one of them.

It's a project, and doing something nice for somebody for no reason. Goddamn that feels pretty damn Copacetic. :)

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, August 22, 2014 7:15 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

I "fixed" it!

There was really nothing wrong with it except for some very strange settings causing the problems. I think somebody who didn't know what they were doing was just clicking on a whole bunch of crap in the BIOS and Windows until the damn thing was a paperweight.

Upping the on-board video memory to 8MB from 1MB allowed me to resize the screen so it showed more than 1/8th of a webpage and it could display the full range of color instead of the lowest setting. I did a few tweaks to get the Ethernet port working again.

I was really hoping to just install Windows 7 on it, but that's not possible since it only has 512mb of old ram. I can't believe I didn't have any more of that type laying around. I must have already put it in other people's PC's over the years.

I did have an old PCI graphics card that I got working which should speed it up a bit since the CPU doesn't have to handle the video output anymore, and I installed Office on there so she doesn't have to keep doing her resumes with wordpad... so all in all it's going to work better for her needs than it ever has when she gets it back.....

I just hate sending it back to her with XP on it since MS stopped supporting that OS back in April :(

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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