What the fuck's up with people trying to sell really old laptops for a lot more than they're worth?

What the fuck's up with people trying to sell really old laptops for a lot more than they're worth?

Every time I browse for used laptops online, people are selling 8+ year old laptops for $200+.

Other urls found in this thread:

ebay.com/itm/IBM-THINKPAD-360PE-2620-TOUCH-Flip-Screen-20-years-old-/181604157715?hash=item2a48738913:g:ZrEAAOSwMKpUalKG
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because of the thinkpad meme on Sup Forums, they know lonely neckbeards will fall for it

An item is not intrinsically worth anything, the market decides the price.

It's not even just Thinkpads. I've seen shitty Toshiba Satellites falling apart at the seams being sold for ridiculous prices.

T420
>8GB RAM
>i5-2420m
>320GB HDD
>1600x900 14" screen
>9 cell battery
>supported by several linux distro
> $180

Just toss in a SSD as the boot drive and take the DVD drive out and install the HDD in there and it's a pretty bad ass basic laptop for under $250

If you are talking about Craigslist or even Amazon, shit has always been overpriced there. Hell, rule of thumb is to avoid both if you are looking for tech, since people have no fucking clue on how to price shit.

Look up Economy Basics for Elementary School.
Chapter 3, Supply and Demand

Yeah, and tomorrow, the motherboard dies like it does with almost every old notebook and you are fucked.

It's mostly on Craigslist, so that's true, yeah.

I'm going to buy a T420 pretty soon, I've just been looking for cheap-ish laptops to run a server on and generally dick around with.

Man, people must be clamoring for these fuckin' things, huh?

Pic related.

Well I've had mine almost 6 months. Still going strong. They're also easily fixed and spare parts are cheap on ebay lately. Motherboards are under $50 if you look around.

'almost' being the keyword here.

Not OP, but I'm pretty sure he is talking about retards who try to sell used electronics for 20% less than they bought it for. And no, nobody is stupid enough to buy this. You can have shitty new laptop for the same price that is 10-times better and has at least some warranty.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Like, I can understand wanting a bit of money back after buying a new laptop or whatever, but no way in fuck am I paying $150 for a system that can barely handle XP, never mind anything else.

sorry then.

I assumed you meant older business-tier machines that are extremely popular now due to the pic in the OP

Yeah, the thinkpad market is fantastic right now, good price for performance, and more than capable of web browsing and basic productivity in W7 and W10.

And you can dual boot linux very easily.

>I never owned business class laptop and have no clue wtf I'm talking about
I'm quoting you btw

I do, normies don't. And the fact that it's "business" or expensive doesn't mean it's immune to malfunctions. Macbooks are expensive as hell and considered reliable, but they use (or at least used) Foxconn motherboards, which are absolute shit.
Also don't forget you are buying x years old thing, that the owner might have been using for 12 hours a day for x years. And trust me, he won't tell you this little detail if he wants to sell it.

I have had many laptops go through my hands to know what I'm talking about and I wouldn't buy used one even in the worst case scenario. They cheap out even on high-end models.

People overvalue their shit.

On Facebook I see people trying to sell shattered iPhone 4s for $100. Normies are fucking retarded

It's not just thinkpads, I've seen idiots trying to sell their "brand new" laptops with Celeron N2840's for like $500. It's fucking absurd.

It's not limited to Sup Forums. Ask /k/ about Armslist, the firearms version of craigslist. Idiots there list guns for prices higher than actually buying it retail at times, and/or destroy a historical gun's value by modding it but try to sell it for the price a historically sound one would be worth, and/or customize a gun just the way they want it and try to sell it for near retail price along with the retail price of each customized component. This isn't even getting into mods that are poorly done but Bubba thinks he's modded it fantastically.

It's absurd.

why are you trying to buy really old laptops?

Even so, if someone buys it, that's what it was worth in the market.

This. Why the fuck can't OP tell the difference from an old laptop and a new one, and why is he complaining about buying them. There must be some deeper meaning to this.

People actually pay those prices. The demand is coming from unironically autistic children who "collect" old computers then make shitty videos on YouTube about them. I recently sold on craigslist a few very old laptops I've come across, all to a kid who obviously had a severe case of the auts.

People don't realize that computers just don't hold value. Something that sold for $2,000 a year ago is worth about $800 today.

My ThinkPad T400 has survived 8 tough years, falling on hard floors, and enduring thousands of smoked cigarettes. It still works perfectly.
A 5 year old ThinkPad is easily worth 200$ if it lasts for only 3 more years.

>smoking
what's it like to die of cancer and COPD?

Just make sure you don't support the market by staying away from overpriced shit.

Because having a tiny Toshiba Libretto is A E S T H E T I C as fuck.

I'm sure I will find out. Death does not concern me much tho.

this, most people aren't expecting another 5+ years. For $200-300 I expect 2-3 years of good web browsing, anime watching, shit posting, etc.

And I am saying this as someone whos job is buying and reselling refurbished computers. When I tell you your shitty dell is worth $50 it's not because I am being mean, it's because I know I will have to replace the hard drive (most likely) replace the keyboard that you pulled half the keys out of, and clean the jizz stains off the thing, then reinstall windows and software, and finally sell the piece of shit for $199.

>have shitty new laptop for the same price that is 10-times better
Yes with a terrible keyboard, glossy screen and awful build quality.
3 year old business laptop > brand new shit laptop

business class laptop sure are nice, but nowhere as reliable as people like to meme about when you get it used and usually very old.

people are greedy

This.

And the reason the market has decided these old laptops are worth $200 is because of tech illiterates out there buying them.

They guys that sell them literally just install windows 10 on it and sell it as a "new used laptop" and people buy it because it's running he latest version of windows so it must be up to date.

What a shitty example.
Hardware like Toughbooks will always have an inherent value because their usefulness is derived from their durability and related features, not how big their numbers are in some shitty synthetic benchmark.

At least post an old PPC mac or something if you want to drive the point home.

oh i don't know

the rape fees associated with ebay and paypal? not to mention rape fees associated with shipping?

If the screen isn't at least 1080p then the laptop is worth nothing

I have fully functional compaq and thinkpad from ~2007/8 that I bought used few years back (around 2010 maybe, not really sure). They mostly gather dust due to shitty specs now but that's besides the point.
I've never had business class laptop die out of any serious malfunction like mobo shitting itself. Things like inverter dying or fan getting worn out happen, that's true enough but nothing you can't fix.
I'm not even saying that it's not possible for chinkpad to die, because that's flat out false, but most of the time used business class laptops outlive shitty consumer class laptops, this is a fact. If you are on a limited budget and can pick between new garbage and used good laptop you should pick later every time. If you have endless budget to blow on laptop then go ahead and do whatever you want.

>I gnu what I got.

Freedom aint free

The same thing happens with cars
>slammed
>gutted interior
>spraypaint paint job
>neons
>steel rims painted blue

$1000 over kbb, no trades I know what I got

I have business-class shit older than you are that still works just fine.

There's practically nothing to fail on a well-designed and well-cooled system other than the hard drive and battery.

I have a T60, X60, and T400 all of which I've had for 3 years and use them all daily no problems yet except the x60 needed a new fan. $15 later and 40 minutes it was back up.

I have about 14 thinkpads of various dates from 2004 to 2009 and they're all running normally

the only failures if you can call it that are the batteries running down after 4 years of day after day use -- and that's one reason for the popularity of the devices

S-should I not buy a T530 then? I really like the specs of one I found, for 400$CAD, free provincial shipping, and it'd be able to handle 16GB, which I feel will be needed for next/4th semester VMs...

This is true. I fell for the Thinkpad meme and after getting a 850 EVO 250GB, 4GB RAMN and a 2.6 CPU upgrade my Memepad decided to fuck up after a year! It's there collecting dust. LCD panel went black, bought some shit to replace and is still black which means is the LCD itself that fucked up. It also refuse to boot which means an USB fuck up or the MOBO fuck up. I think I didn't own it for a full year.

T530 is the first of the nuthinkpads

I honestly would prefer a T520 or W520. The keyboard and trackpad are miles better. And the specs aren't that far off.

PowerPC Macs aren't overpriced though

Go on ebay and look at the clamshell iBooks, then come back and tell us about how they aren't overpriced.

Shit I just found an iBook G3 for $40

Anyway that's one specific model out of a magnitude of machines

Ive owned 2 satellites.
You would think id learnt from the first one.

I honestly think that they are the best laptop full stop for running linux as far as im concerned.
They are reasonably good for running plan 9 aswell. (wifi is your own problem to sort out thoough).

sterling .22's over $200.
Seen it bro.

>You would think id learnt from the first one.
heh. i had one. i don't have it anymore.

I actually still have them.
They're in my wardrobe collecting dust.

>motherboard dies like it does with evey old notebook
I'll have you know I have been using the same Thinkpad a22p since 2001 to write papers, send emails, browse the web, and play games. Everything still works perfectly, even the 30GB hard drive.

You can put the *20 series keyboard in *30 machines now, so might as well buy the newer thinkpad

>it's old it should be cheap
durr

Unless you'd rather not fuck with taking apart a laptop. I'll replace RAM or HDD/SSD. But I hate replacing panels, keyboards, trackpads, etc.
Not that i can't or haven't just more of a pain.

I have to mirror this.

I've had black friday sub $200 laptops shit the bed in under a year, but never anything that was business class. I exclusevely buy off lease laptops and replace the HD with solid state.

Got a ton of dell laptops running 24 hrs a day like a champ.

Want to know why? If they cheap out on parts at the factory, that cost is on them for the duration of the lease.

Consumer grade shit they dont care about because after a year, it isn't their problem anymore.
The more you know..

>But I hate replacing panels, keyboards, trackpads, etc.

actually replacing the keyboard in most thinkpads (T-series, at least) is very easy. Remove one (labeled) screw from the bottom, push up on the keyboard, and it just slides right out.

yeah some of the thinkpads are certainly not bad. At least the older ones.

Look... I went browsing Ebay a few months ago looking to see how much some of my favorite older laptops ran thinking I might pick a couple up.

Compaq N610c: Saw these going for nearly $200 with some of the slowest processors made for the damned thing. These were new in 2003.

Thinkpad 570e: When I find them in working order they're usually north of $100 with a P3-450, a little more if it has the P3-500, a few bucks more if it includes the floppy drive, more if the Ultrabase is included, and even more than that if the ultrabase includes the DVD drive. I saw a complete 500MHz 570 with everything included along with some random wifi card and a NIC for nearly $250. FOH...

Thinkpad 760XD: I loved my 760XD... have no idea what I would do with it today other than install Win98 on it and use it as a mobile Quake and Starcraft machine... But I saw one just now on Ebay for $95.50 OBO

Dell Inspiron 630M: Had one for work, kept the thing for 4 years and never had a single problem, I even had Dell ship me a replacement keyboard 'cause some letters were fading (still have that keyboard). Mine had a Pent-M 755 (2GHZ) and 2GB of RAM. Right now a 1.7GHz version is selling on ebay for $119.50

shits disgusting...

yep normies browse Sup Forums just to see thinkpad prices

WALL OF TEXT

Shit you not these prices are probably due to field technicians running old hardware to service old software. It's easier to just buy the replacement model and dump the HDD back in if something dies.

Secure places like government labs require incoming vendor laptops to have administratively disabled or removed wifi/bluetooth/camera. This is far easier to get cleared if the laptop straight up is missing some of those things due to being old.

>I know because I've ordered 3 panasonic toughbooks recently for an access control tech working in a secure location

Where I live, people try to sell their 2 year old computer parts for 80-90% of their original value.
Then they ask for discounts when stuff are being sold for 20-30%.

People are just greedy.

I bought my 980 Ti's for like 800 each and found an idiot to give me 700 a piece :^)

He thought he got the deal of a lifetime

Shitposting from a T430 that I've riced out, parts wise that is. 2 SSDs and a lot of man hours but it was worth the 300 I paid for the machine and then the additional 400 in parts I put in it.

I have a T420 with two 240GB SSDs. One for Arch, one for windows.

Great shitposting machine. Paid $325 including SSDs.

>what are collection items?

You'd be amazed how much retards will overvalue G5 and early Intel systems.

ebay.com/itm/IBM-THINKPAD-360PE-2620-TOUCH-Flip-Screen-20-years-old-/181604157715?hash=item2a48738913:g:ZrEAAOSwMKpUalKG

Monetary value is not actually determined by gigaflips as it would be in a technocracy ruled by the sorts of nerds that would ban thin laptops

See: Calculators. TI's weak ass processors are actually still in production, so the cost has to be padded out so they still turn a profit. Producing outdated hardware still costs money.

You can easily get a G5 for what its worth. Or do you think that you should be able to get a bomb ass workstation for pennies because it's not x86?

You sure can, but it doesn't mean there aren't still a lot of people asking $400 for their beat to shit single-socket 1.6 GHz G5 systems.

You can sell iMac G5s and Power Mac G4s for $200+ all day long over here at auction locally, it's funny as fuck to see the same system being resold over and over again by all the dumbasses that thought they were getting the deal of a lifetime.

>"One of the first advanced notebooks on the market in 1994-1995"
>"outperformed Apple and Macintosh. "
It's a shitbox with a pen, already outclassed by the 700 and mobile RS/6000 series (and probably the PowerBook 500 series too) and with a CPU that played second fiddle on release to a superior sibling that was already old news a year before that thing was even released. IBM had already been toying with pen computing since the very first ThinkPad, which was a tablet.

What the fuck made them think that even a retard would pay out the ass this heavily especially with such poor research?

the i486DX2-50 was decently faster than all of those you mentioned senpai.

i see people here selling used macs for the same price as a new one, t420s for 450-500 USD

its nuts

No way, 700s were running on DX/4s by that time, and an RS/6000 N40 with a 50 MHz PowerPC 601 would have blown that ancient shit out clock-for-clock.

Even the 33 MHz 68LC040 in a PB 540 would have matched or obliterated that gimped little thing unless the task was FPU-dependent. DX/2-50s were shit even new owing to their garbage 25 MHz bus frequency.

people are greedy dude

yeah because ebay powerbook g4 aren't overpriced af

They're not

What might concern you however will be the constant feeling of fatigue due to the irreversible lung damage that you're inflicting on yourself.

TI is only in business because they have a monopoly on calculators that are just crippled enough to be allowed for use on standardized tests. There's no other reason that ancient processor/display combo should cost 100+ USD in this day and age.

And more so, there's no reason such hardware needs to be exactly like it is.

Id like to see a TI calculator that isnt the exact same as it was when it came out in the 80s. They could stand to make those basic bitches small and light enough to enable the thing to have the batteries expire before it's through with them. A new, cheaper display(maybe E-Ink). Better keypad layout (seriously, fuck the current button layout, and the buttons too).

There's so many improvements that could make these things worth their while, but they aren't gonna do them.

My 8 year old toshiba satellite runs smooth af right now still.

they had someone's cum all over them

>Macbooks are expensive as hell and considered reliable
>Macbooks are considered reliable
>Macbooks
>reliable

Now I know you're an ignorant savage

expensive as hell buying online i only buy second hand computers at flea markets then i can really jew on price