Re: [PLUG] Reputable sources for reconditioned / refurbished laptops

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2024 at 9:08 PM K.S. Bhaskar via plug
<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
>
> I have in the past bought reconditioned / refurbished laptops from MicroCenter, generally with good results. Are there other reputable sources that anyone can recommend (especially if MicroCenter doesn't have what I'm looking for)? Thanks.
>

I can't speak to anything local, or laptops specifically, but I have
been buying used desktops/workstations from Newegg and I've had
positive experiences, mostly.  The only issue I've run into is that a
few had SATA SSDs approaching end of life, but the simplest solution
there is just buy your storage separately.

Note that I'm mostly buying fairly old stuff - boxes to run Ceph which
need plenty of RAM and not much CPU, for minimum cost per USB3 host or
PCIe lane depending on whether it is doing HDD or NVMe - sub $200
stuff.  I have no idea whether they're a good source for higher end
popular laptops.

If you're running Linux on them it probably isn't an issue (might even
be a feature), but I'm guessing the best deals would be for popular
corporate desktop models that are EOL or otherwise no longer supported
for Windows.  There must be a constant supply of those.

I would be interested in what the best options locally are, either for
newer stuff or older stuff (especially things like U.2 NVMes and so
on).

Ugh, and I have to take the time to add this rant: website search
filters are USELESS.  I want to know how many USB3 hosts or PCIe lanes
something has, or if it supports bifurcation, and so on.  The search
filters all have stuff like clock speed and RAM capacity (not even
speed).  Maybe you can search for i3s vs i7s - and never mind that
today's i3 is way faster than the i7 with a higher clock speed from 5
years ago.  It is like they let the marketing department design the
search filters.  To be fair, I bet they make a ton of money selling 3
generation old stuff at a premium because it has a brand like i7 and a
high clock speed, and loads of DDR4 with first word latency of 15ns.

-- 
Rich
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