MX Linux Forum

I'm almost a computer junkie and can't resist a good deal on a computer.
I was recently thinking about the best and worst deals I've gotten on computers. Most of the Thinkpads I have bought have been good deals. My X220 and T420 were especially good deals. And I've been given a few nice computers over the years.
The best deal I've gotten price-wise was a HP Chromebook that was listed incorrectly on ebay and had problems and missing features like only 2gb ram instead of 4 gb. I was going to return it, but told the guy I'd keep it if he made a price adjustment, he sold it to me for $35 and I'm still using it. My worst machine deal was also a Chromebook. A Toshiba Chromebook that was refurbished for $188. It lasted about 6 months before the lid got cracks in it and shorted out the lcd.
I have a pretty good selection of computers right now, so the only way I'll buy one at this point is if it is a very good deal.
Just curious what your best and worst computer deals have been if you want to share them.

The best computer deal I've ever had is my little £200 netbook which I bought in 2008.
It's an ' Akoya E1210 'Mini' ' which is basically just a re-branded MSI U-100 'Wind' netbook. It has a 32bit Atom processor, 2GB ram (came with just 1GB), onboard intel GMA graphics and a 1024x600 display. It came with Windows XP but very soon was converted to a Linux machine, having hosted Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Salix, and of course various releases of MX. It now happily purrs along using MX-18.3 32bit.
This machine has worked flawlessly and on a daily basis since 2008. I've never had any other hardware that has lasted so long without croaking or needing replacement parts.
(edited to remedy early morning typos)

Hmm, worst, for me, was a Nova N1 netbook, you had to remove the keyboard every time you wanted access to the ram or HDD, eventually the keyboard became non functional, & it now sits as a test machine, used very occasionally, because it boots from the SD card slot - but it is minus its screen, keyboard, HDD, & wifi chip - but it does now have 2GB ram - it would work as a router or NAS, but I can't be bothered.

Most of my laptops date from 2008~2011, & have been upgraded to 2GB ram, & remain in service, thanks to having Linux on them.

I do have one laptop with 6GB ram & a 500GB HDD, I mainly use it for remastering, as it gets a bit noisy for regular use - otherwise, I have a SBC as my main desktop, 4GB ram, 240GB SSD, it's great, 4" square, 1.5" thick, & perfectly silent in operation.

Color dot matrix printer around 1994. Cost was $1500. I just had to have it. Color was produced by a movable ribbon. Needless to say quality was awful. But at the time I was gadget crazy. Maybe I still am.

Ghost67 wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:41 am The best computer deal I've ever had is my little £200 netbook which I bought in 2008.
It's an ' Akoya E1210 'Mini' ' which is basically just a re-branded MSI U-100 'Wind' netbook. It has a 32bit Atom processor, 2GB ram (came with just 1GB), onboard intel GMA graphics and a 1024x600 display. It came with Windows XP but very soon was converted to a Linux machine, having hosted Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Salix, and of course various releases of MX. It now happily purrs along using MX-18.3 32bit.
This machine has worked flawlessly and on a daily basis since 2008. I've never had any other hardware that has lasted so long without croaking or needing replacement parts.
(edited to remedy early morning typos)

The early netbooks were tough little beasts. I had one I particularly liked and still miss today. It was an Acer KAV60. I'd still probably have the thing but a hard drive burned up in it and filled it with toxic fumes so that I had to pitch it.
I still prefer small form factor laptops. I only have one laptop out of 5 that is over 12" screen.

Well, you can't beat free.
During the real estate crash ~ ten years ago I was given a used Brother laser printer/fax machine from a closing title office. It's still in use as my default printer. Print quality is good, the toner is cheap, so was the replacement drum cartridge it finally needed last year.

timkb4cq wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:51 am Well, you can't beat free.
During the real estate crash ~ ten years ago I was given a used Brother laser printer/fax machine from a closing title office. It's still in use as my default printer. Print quality is good, the toner is cheap, so was the replacement drum cartridge it finally needed last year.

I love our Brother laser printer. Free is great. I was thrilled when my wife brought home a Lenovo all-in-one from her office. Her boss replaced it and there was nothing wrong that a fresh install of Windows 10 couldn't fix. It had 1 tb hard drive, 4gb ram, ivy bridge cpu. I keep Windows on it for her, but have external drives with Linux on them to boot into when I use it.

Regarding computer, I think a good deal is when you feel that you have paid a fair price.

After my eeePC died 3 years ago, I was enchanted to pay less than £100 for a refurbished Thinkpad; it was some kind of revelation (discovering this range and the "cult" around it). Cool little laptop with clever design (drain holes for instance), of which some parts are easy to replace/repair, built like a tank and which works like a charm with an OS such as linux. Got the same kind of deal recently for my back up laptop (same model).

Cristobal wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:14 pm Regarding computer, I think a good deal is when you feel that you have paid a fair price.

After my eeePC died 3 years ago, I was enchanted to pay less than £100 for a refurbished Thinkpad; it was some kind of revelation (discovering this range and the "cult" around it). Cool little laptop with clever design (drain holes for instance), of which some parts are easy to replace/repair, built like a tank and which works like a charm with an OS such as linux. Got the same kind of deal recently for my back up laptop (same model).

Business class laptops are great, especially Thinkpads. They regularly come off of lease and if you are looking at the right time can get a good deal. I've had 7-8 Thinkpads over the years. They are great machines for the money and incredibly durable. Also they run Linux well, at least the intel ones do.

When my eldest daughter was in the early stages of founding her company (Policygenius.com), her first business purchace was a Lenovo X230 that was to be her road warrior. After 5 years it booted to the blue screen of death and she bought a new X1 Carbon. I told her to mail the X230 to me as I like tinkering with old stuff. I pulled the hard drive, installed an SSD, installed Linux, and have been using the machine for the past several years. In fact I am posting from it now. So free is a pretty good deal

I recently bought a Lenovo T440s with I7, 8GB RAM, 1920x1080 touchscreen, and 500GB drive for $280. I swapped the hard drive for an SSD and it is now my media machine as it has a great display. My newest laptops are Intel Gen 4s, which is plenty new for me...

NGIB wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:56 pm When my eldest daughter was in the early stages of founding her company (Policygenius.com), her first business purchace was a Lenovo X230 that was to be her road warrior. After 5 years it booted to the blue screen of death and she bought a new X1 Carbon. I told her to mail the X230 to me as I like tinkering with old stuff. I pulled the hard drive, installed an SSD, installed Linux, and have been using the machine for the past several years. In fact I am posting from it now. So free is a pretty good deal

I recently bought a Lenovo T440s with I7, 8GB RAM, 1920x1080 touchscreen, and 500GB drive for $280. I swapped the hard drive for an SSD and it is now my media machine as it has a great display. My newest laptops are Intel Gen 4s, which is plenty new for me...

A X230 is on my 'wish list'. I would like to eventually upgrade to one from my X220, but the X220 looks like it will last forever :)

KBD wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 1:44 pm

Cristobal wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 12:14 pm Regarding computer, I think a good deal is when you feel that you have paid a fair price.

After my eeePC died 3 years ago, I was enchanted to pay less than £100 for a refurbished Thinkpad; it was some kind of revelation (discovering this range and the "cult" around it). Cool little laptop with clever design (drain holes for instance), of which some parts are easy to replace/repair, built like a tank and which works like a charm with an OS such as linux. Got the same kind of deal recently for my back up laptop (same model).

Business class laptops are great, especially Thinkpads. They regularly come off of lease and if you are looking at the right time can get a good deal. I've had 7-8 Thinkpads over the years. They are great machines for the money and incredibly durable. Also they run Linux well, at least the intel ones do.

Funnily enough, I've discovered the Thinklight 5 minutes ago... Another great idea/functionality.

The one bad thing about ThinkPads is the whitelist in the BIOS for network cards, which only allows them to boot with their approved cards installed. You can't just buy a faster WiFi card and put it in, you need one with their code to give the secret handshake, and of course those cost more - even though they are the same in all other ways.

Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

genericmeatsack wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:51 pm Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

Some laptops make that part replacable with just a screwdriver...but I don't have the service manual for that one.

timkb4cq wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:51 am Well, you can't beat free.

My freebie printer is an HP Laserjet 1022 which a guy was throwing because he couldn't find a driver to use with Win 7. It's still working with MX 18. New toner drum for it a couple of years ago Compatible HP Q2612A Black Toner Cartridge £16.98 inc VAT delivered.

Stevo wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 3:28 pm

genericmeatsack wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:51 pm Some young neighbors GAVE me a Dell XPS (no, not the new one an old M1530). It needs the charging port replaced. Seems worth firing up the de-solderer if I can find the part. At 6 gig of ram, it beats my other machines by 2 gig.

Some laptops make that part replacable with just a screwdriver...but I don't have the service manual for that one.

i know almost nothing about these, but can this link help? https://www.parts-people.com/blog/2011/ ... tallation/

Cristobal wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:33 pm Funnily enough, I've discovered the Thinklight 5 minutes ago... Another great idea/functionality.

It is a nice feature, but I tend to forget it's there :)

KBD wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:44 am I still prefer small form factor laptops. I only have one laptop out of 5 that is over 12" screen.

I agree, 12~14" screens are great, I have one 15.6" HP laptop that I only use as a desktop machine, because I find the screen too big for me at close range.

KBD wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 10:44 am

Ghost67 wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 2:41 am The best computer deal I've ever had is my little £200 netbook which I bought in 2008.
It's an ' Akoya E1210 'Mini' ' which is basically just a re-branded MSI U-100 'Wind' netbook. It has a 32bit Atom processor, 2GB ram (came with just 1GB), onboard intel GMA graphics and a 1024x600 display. It came with Windows XP but very soon was converted to a Linux machine, having hosted Mint, Ubuntu, Arch, Salix, and of course various releases of MX. It now happily purrs along using MX-18.3 32bit.
This machine has worked flawlessly and on a daily basis since 2008. I've never had any other hardware that has lasted so long without croaking or needing replacement parts.
(edited to remedy early morning typos)

The early netbooks were tough little beasts. I had one I particularly liked and still miss today. It was an Acer KAV60. I'd still probably have the thing but a hard drive burned up in it and filled it with toxic fumes so that I had to pitch it.
I still prefer small form factor laptops. I only have one laptop out of 5 that is over 12" screen.

Yep. Even the cheaper ones like the Averatec N1170, made by Trigem in Korea, that I bought for my wife in 2010 as a birthday gift and am currently using. An Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz single-core 32-bit CPU (slow, utilization maxes out often, but never gets hotter than 56C in a hot climate and it's rated at up to 90C.) Came with 1GB RAM upgraded to 2GB, its memory never gets beyond 65% utilization now. Some keys no longer work, the touchpad died years ago, the batteries no longer take a charge, the BIOS reverts to original settings (date: 01/01/2005) whenever AC power's disconnected, but the darn thing still runs and works, albeit rather slowly. I paid around ₱12,000/$250 for it new (computers, smartphones, digicams and other tech gadgets cost more in the Philippines than in many other countries including the US and EU.) It works best with antiX but I'm currently running MX on it with the 4.9.0-9-686-pae i686 Debian kernel. It even works OK with the stock 4.19.05 kernel (but I'm testing this one to see if it's better on this system or not.)

JayM wrote: Wed Sep 04, 2019 6:43 am
Yep. Even the cheaper ones like the Averatec N1170, made by Trigem in Korea, that I bought for my wife in 2010 as a birthday gift and am currently using. An Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz single-core 32-bit CPU (slow, utilization maxes out often, but never gets hotter than 56C in a hot climate and it's rated at up to 90C.) Came with 1GB RAM upgraded to 2GB, its memory never gets beyond 65% utilization now. Some keys no longer work, the touchpad died years ago, the batteries no longer take a charge, the BIOS reverts to original settings (date: 01/01/2005) whenever AC power's disconnected, but the darn thing still runs and works, albeit rather slowly. I paid around ₱12,000/$250 for it new (computers, smartphones, digicams and other tech gadgets cost more in the Philippines than in many other countries including the US and EU.) It works best with antiX but I'm currently running MX on it with the 4.9.0-9-686-pae i686 Debian kernel. It even works OK with the stock 4.19.05 kernel (but I'm testing this one to see if it's better on this system or not.)

I had 3 Acer netbooks. The KAV60/D250 were easy to upgrade the ram and change the hard drive. The D255 was terrible to take apart. I had to replace its keyboard once, but it was a nice machine that I did lots of distro-hopping with. It held up incredibly well. They had surprisingly good keyboards on them, especially the KAV60/D250. I loved typing on those little machines.

Used to spend a lot of time in HK - before the troubles - buying the latest whizzbang gizmo's

Every NB from the top guns like HP, Dell, Acer, etc, was a miserable failure, yet everybody in
SoCal had a yellow waterproof Sony gadget in the shower, pool or boat that just wouldnt quit,
even battered, drowned Walkmans just kept on playing - I even spent a small fortune on some
really high-end Sony studio reference hi-fi gear - one of our partners at the time was Japanese,
so that helped too .... what could go wrong ....

Back in HK one sunny day, I spotted this large Sony Vaio 17.5 inch NB in a HK store that knew me
well - stunning machine - nothing to touch it - they assured me it would revolutionize the NB
sector, so I bought it - just a shade north of $3K at the time - they delivered it to me at my
Kowloon hotel that evening - I was in-love - stunning - then installed PCLOS Mini-Me Custom
KDE 3.5xx + Compiz etc, went back to Phuket to gloat in my own pool.

My partner, who had just arrived from NC, wanted one as soon as he set eyes on it ... I finally
ended up purchasing 10x pieces for our group ... what an expensive, catastrophic failure that
would turn out to be ....

A week later the HDD failed - WD, I believe - I have more RMA's there than Opple - after a couple
more failures, I finally landed up at Singapore Sony Service Centre .... they replaced almost every
component, buttoned-it-up, only to find it wouldnt boot - the tech-in-charge, took a fresh unit out
of the box, swapped out the HDD and we were back in business ... a week later I was back in SG!!!

QC means zip to China .. the devices failed systemically - even ribbons failed, and there were a lot
of them ... we even thought the units were counterfeit ... they were genuine, according to Sony.

It goes on, only gets worse ... never bought another Made in China Sony product since - never will.

Regards

Jack

I guess it depends on what you mean by "best". I paid $700 for my first home computer in 1997(?), a Packard Bell 233Mhz with monitor and keyboard and mouse, running W95. It changed my life. It opened up a new world. I discovered Usenet with it. I courted my (now) wife with it. I made friends all over the world with it. And it got me started toward a new avocation and skill set that I enjoy and employ to this day.

I've gotten lots of good deals on machines and peripherals since, but for most bang for my buck, that first one wins hands down.

Two best deals come to mind:
eMachines EM250 netbook (rebranded Acer) purchased from Walmart in Feb 2010 for $200 to replace a homebuilt circa 2001 desktop that went bellyup, at a time when I could afford little else; still works, swapped in a 32GB Dogfish SSD last year;
Lenovo i3-3227 based X131e for $100 including shipping from eBay in Nov 2017.

There are many schools using Chromebooks, and these beater laptops are starting to show up on ebay as schools upgrade to newer versions. I recently picked one up for $50. The listing had good photos of the machine so I knew pretty much what I was getting. Often these are listed in batches, with a generic photo of the laptop, and you just cross you fingers and hope for the best. I won't touch anything with missing keys, cracks on the screen, or keys nearly worn off. Chips, scratches, general wear don't bother me as much. 4gb ram was a deal breaker though, I've got old Chromebooks with 2gb ram and more is definitely better.
I probably got my money's worth, especially if it lasts me a few years. It still has almost 2 years official support from Google, and has an intel cpu, and will have life after ChromeOS if it survives with Linux and/or Cloud Ready.