Decent computers are dirt cheap if you shop around & are sure what you need. Otherwise somebody will try to over sell you something that's far greater than you'll ever use, or throw some meaningless large numbers & cool adjectives at you to sell you something way less than you need at a premium price.
Brand new computers, just like new cars are very bad investments. A new car loses 40% of it's value the minute you drive it of the dealer's lot. That $800-$1600 phone 5 years from now will be selling refurbished at Walmart, or used at ebay for $100.
The $1500-$2000 computers today will be on ebay for 10% that much in 5-7 years, if they still run. Today's hi-tech electronics is built with such crap Chinese capacitors & other components, you're lucky if they haven't blown out or burned your house down after 2 years. They aren't even designed to last more than 2 years anymore. Meanwhile that 2011-1014 computer can still run like new in 5-7 years, & probably can be upgraded or modernized. You don't have to buy a new lamp just because you want a new, better, or brighter light bulb.
And Windows 10 is still crap. If you can't deal with Linux, or are led to believe that the sky is falling if you stick with Windows 7, maybe you can look into a cheap used Mac, or android laptops & tablets.
Up to this day most ATM machines throughout the entire world are still running XP. And they still get security updates almost weekly. When was the last time you heard about an ATM machine getting hacked? They do rarely, but not nearly as often as W10.
W10's security is a lie. Right off the shelf it's full of partner's spyware & malware that are chock full of security holes. W10 is also in constant communication with dozens of corporations & app creators -- all of which that can be breached at any time.
How secure will your home be if you gave dozens of corporations & thousands of their employees the key to your front door, then told them everything you do, what you buy, where you live, & when you will or won't be home?
I'm using a pair of HP Elite 8300 Ultra Slim desktops as my primary computers. They built & sold the model new from 2011-2013, but my particular units are from 2011. They're 3ghz quad cores (that's 3ghz per core) with intel turbo-boost up to 3.6ghz. It boosts to 3.6ghz without getting warm or errors.
I got them both from ebay. Not familiar with that model a couple years ago, I picked 1 up for only $79 on a gamble. It must have came from a clean office. It looked & ran like brand new. The hard drive had quite a few hours on it but still ran perfectly. It came with 4gb of RAM & Windows 7 64 bit pro. It also came with the Window 7 install disk & a drivers disk for if I ever wished to do a clean install from fresh.
It's about the size of some of smaller DVD players (about half the size of a VCR) & weighs only 9 pounds. It utilizes a lot of laptop parts inside, so only consumes as much power as a good laptop.
It'll outperform almost anything in the stores today except the highest end gaming computers, but with some high-end graphics added, it would be as good as any decent high-end gaming computer too.
HD digital video conversions & processing that is taking everyone else anywhere from all afternoon to a couple days on the finest newest machines out there is taking me 10-30 minutes to do the same thing! So it's blazing fast.
I liked it so much, the day after I got it, I was on ebay looking for another one just like it cheap, & bid on it. Got another for $89 (after shipping) in the exact same condition with the disks & all.
No DVD drive in them though. Most people don't need them anymore but I do. Ebay had the ones that fit the HP Ultra Slim elites for $9. I put a newer bigger hard drive in one too, & added 4gb more RAM.
I was able to copy over all my files to both of them, so I have a matched identical pair of machines. They both had W7 pro, but I customized my own W7, so wanted that on them instead. Nobody ever told me that Windows wasn't open source.
If you're not ready for the ebay game, you can buy decent used machines from many retailers, including Walmart, Walgreens online, & NewEgg. Beware buying used from Amazon... many of them may not be trusted & also sell at ebay for less.
I bought my current 3.0ghz dual core laptop from Walmart a few years ago, but it came from a seller, CTechCity. It arrived looking new, 2 - 5.5 hour batteries, Windows 7, installation disks. But that one was a special rare deal, & not their normal used price.
Since then, I picked up 2 dual core HP DC7900 desktops for customers from CTechCity for $99. Yep, just like my old previous pair of primary computers. They'll rival many new quad core machines today. Literally all I had to do for the customers was put in bigger hard drives (they came with good 250gb ones though), then install all their files & programs. They even came with a good keyboard & mouse. You just plug it into any monitor or modern TV.
These are office, not home machines. They're designed & built to a different standard. Better durabilty, less fluff or gimmicks, & more functionality. All older office HPs are solid, built to last a very long time, upgradable, easy to find parts for, & easy to work on. They're actually designed to easily take apart & do some stuff to it inside. It sort of like buying a car with a hood that opens to get at the engine, or buying one without one because they want you to buy a new car when it's time to change the oil.
My last customer had one of her cats knock her laptop off a table, & it smashed on the floor. Dang, I just rebuilt that old laptop for her about 2 years ago. It was so old it still had Vista on it until I upgraded to W7 2 years ago, & has an obsolete PATA/IDE hard drive in it. Hunting around for used parts on ebay it became apparent that is was gonna cost her almost as much for me to fix up, than what I can find a newer, better, working used one for.
As soon as I told her that... she quickly jumped & said that she wants a great big 16 onch screen! Her current, broken one was only 11". Wait a minute -- to go bigger would cost even more.
Finally I tracked down a nice fast 15.5" 2013 HP laptop for $169 at ETechCity. Windows 7, new battery, installation & driver disks. It looked almost brand new. Free shipping. By the time I copied all her files to it, installed all her programs, & did some special tweaks, she got it for $210.
I liked it so much, I ask ETechCity if I can put a down payment on another they had just like it to hold for me for a month or 2. The idea was, after I get paid for the repair, & sell another laptop I was rebuilding, I could afford to buy it. So I got it last month. Now I have 2 laptops that are only 5 & 7 years old that work as good as most new ones.
My old eyes like the bigger screen, & keyboard light on the newer one. But I also still prefer to lug around the smaller lighter one more... plus I have a pair of 5.5 hour batteries for it. So I probably won't sell the older one & keep both just for myself. I got a couple single core laptops that work well for sale, but nobody wants single core computers anymore unless it's an over 3.2ghz core. They won't play HD video off YouTube but will play regular video or 720p HD from it's own drive or external drive.
Yeah, I too could never get used to laptop touch pads either. They're OK, but I just can't work quickly or precisely as I can with a mouse. But I'm even worse than you. I don't like a regular mouse either. But the laptop keyboards are full size, so type OK on them. The feel is a bit lighter than my regular keyboards though. My favorite & most used keyboard was built in 1998.
I use a trackball on my primary computer. Before 1998 I used a Linux box & WebTV... before Microsoft took over WebTV (later rebadged MSTV) WebTV was also a Linux box. I used a wireless keyboard on both with the only way to move the cursor around was with the arrow keys & a mini gamer-like joystick.
I really didn't touch windows much until they got Windows 98 at work... a big & amazing leap from W95. Somebody gave me their broken W98 machine for free around then, & I fixed it for myself. Then Linux for desktops got sloppy & disorganized so I stayed with windows most of the time.
But old habits die hard. I still can't sit at a desk for hours at a computer, or use a regular mouse. Because of my old wireless or long-wire keyboards, I'm used to a soft chair, sofa, or bed if I'm on a computer a long time -- with a nice trackball. But believe me, everyone I talked into a nice trackball, after they tried to get used to it for a week or 2, never turned back.
But only my primary computer has a trackball (old wireless one) & a big, full, heavy wired (long wire) keyboard. My secondary & backup machines, use a wireless keyboard with built in track pad. They're backups or for extra work, or as a media center/manger, so it's rare I'm doing a lot of typing, programming or graphics on them. I still use the track pads on the laptops. I'm not comfortable with them, but tweaking the pad settings, & disabling pad tapping (tapping really should be disabled by default to prevent errors), makes them a little better.
Quad core speed demon
http://www.ctechcity.com/hp-8200-elite-desktop-tower-intel-core-i5-2500-2nd-gen-3-3ghz-8gb-500gb-hdd-win-7-pro/Basic dual 2.6ghz office machine with intel turbo-boost up to 3.2ghz. Not for gaming without an excellent graphics card. Will play up to 1080p YouTube smooth though. Incredibly cheap.
http://www.ctechcity.com/hp-compaq-6200-pro-sff-pc-dual-core-intel-g620-2-6ghz-2gb-ram-250gb-hdd-windows-7-pro/
Betty's Pub 20.1
Topic: Regrettably I see it's time for the Winter Flickr (Read 15210 times)
