Re: Not Much LINUX Stuff of Late

On 8/2/26 16:21, rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 11:12:08 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> Exactly. when my local PC supplier's cheapest offering into the home
>> market got over $700 or thereabouts I started buying refurbished PCS and
>> laptops at half the price. And discovered that an ex office HP desktop
>> with intel onboard, did everything I needed at half the price.
> 
> I didn't buy refurbs until recently. I wanted a somewhat modern test bed
> and found I could buy a refurbed Lenovo T480 cheaper than a low end mini.
> It has worked out well and does have the advantage that I can pack it up
> and take it with me.
> 
> After learning the hard way that cheap was ultimately more expensive the
> company I worked for started buying Dells. When I was thinking about doing
> another build I added up the prices. Even with reusing the Antec case and
> power supply the total was more than buying a Dell at CostCo. It had the
> same specs as my work machine so I knew it was adequate. Still is, for
> that matter, although I added RAM, a SATA SSD, and a slight upgrade to the
> Gen 4 Intel processor.
> 
> With the current madness refurds look even better.

   Yea ... price-wise indeed ... but how WELL were
   they 'refurbished' ?

   The most typical fail is in a shit-rated cap in
   the power supply train. I've fixed some of those
   issues on the bench (lucky I collected caps and
   shit from old equipment). Re-furbs ... they MIGHT
   have just replaced shit with more shit.

   The current world semiconductor market is in serious
   flux and 'AI' needs have shifted many production lines
   away from 'consumer' stuff. Compare prices for common
   memory shit now from even two years ago. All the biggies
   have sold their souls to the 'AI' market.

   I got lucky, bought a lot of memory/flash/M.2 and such
   about two years ago. Prices were GOOD. But not NOW.
   Dunno when there may be an improvement. Not THIS year
   for sure, probably not next year either.

   Umm ... 'AI' customers NEED decent boxes/laps/etc
   to USE the AI properly. Now you can't AFFORD those
   'decent' units. PROBLEM.