On 2013-10-12 06:01, g.lister wrote:
Interesting. I always feel that I am getting ripped off when buying
something refurbished but then again I find my stuff which I bought
many years ago still works and is easier to install stuff on (things I
care about anyway) and now when looking around I find the new stuff
has some major improvements which might come in handy (graphics, CPU,
faster RAM) if I settle for the off the shelf stuff (Win* or OS X) but
since I don't I have to poke around more to find what I like.
I guess I should look as well on refurbished stuff and they come with
a warranty, isn't it usually shorter? Replacing a hard drive and
adding some more ram plus the right OS may make it into a livable
solution. At the end one uses the software. My old Sony is kind of
like that lots of things will never work, read webcam, but overall it
has proven to be a well made laptop. I also got a more recent Dell,
XPS I think, for my significant other and that one is also quite good
it has sustained mass impact from some kid handling and is still running.
As I said already, buying a consumer-grade laptop new from your local
big box retailer generally gets you a one-year warranty.
Whereas buying a refurb laptop from a reputable supplier (such as Dell
Financial Services, in both Canada & USA) gets you a ... one-year
warranty :-).
You are not getting cutting-edge equipment. But in the case of running
*anything* other than OS that comes loaded on the laptop, that's a
*good* thing, not a bad thing. I can't even run Windows 7 properly on
the vast majority of laptops I can buy at Best Buy today, why would I
expect to be able to run OpenBSD? Whereas anything refurb is generally
far enough behind the trailing edge that the drivers are already
built-in to the OS. I can install Win7 onto a Latitude E4500 and 99% of
the drivers will work out of the box. Maybe I don't get the absolute
maximum set of functionality, but everything works. I can also install
OpenBSD onto a Latitude E4500 and get the same level of functionality.
(Assuming you connect to Ethernet at first, to auto-download the
Broadcom wireless firmware during first boot.)
Keep in mind that although you aren't getting the latest CPU, that's
mostly irrelevant today - and especially so for OpenBSD.
You aren't getting "ripped off" when buying from DFS, because they're
only charging you (roughly) 1/n of the original price, where n =
laptop_age_in_years. Those $299 deals they have for 3-year-old laptops
are mostly for units that cost around $1500 brand new!
Right now, DFS Canada has several laptops with 8GB of RAM for under
$800. How much more would you like to put into it?!? Only the very
newest laptops can take more than that anyway!
Also, buying business-grade laptops is a sound investment because you
don't have to replace them as often. In my experience, the average
consumer-grade laptop (including Dell Inspiron and Lenovo IdeaPad) lasts
one year, or maybe two if you don't carry it around and don't abuse it
at all. The average business-grade laptop (Dell Latitude, Lenovo
ThinkPad) lasts about three years under heavy use and abuse, and can
last up to five years if handled gently.
I do recommend switching out the HDD and installing an SSD just so you
never have to worry about crashing the disk if you drop it. Also, a Core
2 Duo with an SSD and enough RAM (4Gb+) usually "feels" like a quad-core
i7 with a 5400rpm HDD and 2Gb RAM... reinforcing my point about CPU
horsepower, above.
I *prefer* to buy refurb because I know I'm not going to get ripped open
on the "cutting edge", especially when it comes to running various
UNIXes on the hardware.
Good luck with your quest, regardless. (FYI: that solar-powered laptop,
while nifty, is unlikely to work 100% with OpenBSD - the components will
likely be too new and support will be lacking. OTOH, the screenshots
show Ubuntu Linux, so I could be wrong here.)
--
-Adam Thompson
athom...@athompso.net
