Mining Craigs List

Another year, another Super Bowl. They go by so fast, and in the modern league created by the salary cap, it's no longer interesting to me. So, what did I do on Super Bowl weekend?

I played my game....... but I play on a bigger field. It looks like this! If you live in the vicinity of a metropolitan area, Craigslist is a wonderful thing. For computing equipment, it's especially fruitful. In the last few decades, many corporations have moved their headquarters to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, and that means, lots and lots of computing equipment of all kinds. And of course, quite often, this stuff makes it's way onto Craigslist, or our famed "1st Saturday" flea market, although that's not what it once was due to the Internet. However, you can't just go running around willy-nilly all over the place. That's counterproductive in both time and gas ($$$) expended. It takes strategy. Sometimes, the planning takes the better part of a week! Here's how this latest effort went......

It started with a ThinkPad T500. I had a client who wanted something of this type and spec, after searching for several days on Craigslist, I was able to find one for $100. This price was excellent, and would give me the ability to put in a small SSD in it as well, then sell it for the $200 price that they typically sell for "retail". The seller of the machine was in the far northern part of Plano, which is the far northern part of the Dallas suburbs. 

I'm also constantly on the look out for SSDs in good shape, for a good price. Where do you think I get the 64Gb one that I put in the T500? Anyway, a guy had an OCZ Vertex 2, 120Gb model for $60. But it's a 3.5" form-factor drive you say. It is. So it's going into my HTPC machine which has a nice 64Gb Mushkin Callista in it and I'll move that into the T500. Instant upgrade for the HTPC and a SSD for the T500! 

In the middle of all that searching, I came across a Dell Latitude E6400, complete with dock, and 2 power adapters for $85. Since I sell these on a regular basis for $150-200 (depending on the size drive I put in it), it was a no-brainer. I don't want to belabor a topic I've written on before, but these laptops are just excellent deals right now and can be found anywhere if you pay attention. Plus they are way easy to work on, even when compared to the ThinkPads. Virtually all of the typical parts that need to be replaced, such as RAM, WiFi cards, etc. and be access by pulling one screw which secures a plate that cover the entire bottom. And they are darn-near as rugged as a ThinkPad as well!

The last item that needed to be secured was a pair of Corsair XMS3 RAM for my Ivy Bridge new-build. I had talked to the seller earlier this week about getting them this weekend from him since he lives in Arlington well west of Dallas. These are good, not great sticks of RAM that would fit into the concept of what I wanted to do with this new machine. First of all it was $60, and in today's world, that's a very good price for a pair of 1600, 8Gb x 2 DDR3 RAM. Although, not high-end gaming RAM, these could be tweaked a little bit if i want at some point in the future. As it turned out, I got a bonus when he had all kinds of trouble getting out to meet me and took $10 off for making me wait. So yeah, $50...... I can live with that!

Many of you who are older will recognize this from the Family Circus comic. It's known as the "Billy Path" which would periodically appear to show the circuitous route by which their son Billy would take to do some particular thing. By now, many of you might be thinking that my Saturday of picking up parts all over the DFW area looked about like this. In fact though, this is the art of Craigslist mining. 

Here's how it worked. We live about 10 minutes east of Mesquite which is one of the far eastern suburbs of Dallas. So I arranged to meet the first guy who was in far northern Plano first. This allowed me to make the best time by taking our very own PGBT (President George Bush Tollway) almost right up to the doorstep of his location, and pick up the T500. This was followed by a 25 minute run down Central Expressway (U.S. 75) to the 2nd guy who was basically due south. I had to wait for this very sleepy seller to wake up and bring me out the SSD, but by 9:30 I was a few miles to the south at a Target to meet the IT guy selling off the surplus Dell E6400. This put me right next to downtown Dallas and allowed me to run over to the 1st Saturday computer flea market to pick up a few odd-and-ends. From there, I picked up I-30 west head to Arlington by 11:00am. I was at my favorite "store", Electronic Discount in less than 30 minutes. In the meantime, I contacted the seller who had the RAM. Although he had problems and couldn't meet me at the store as planned, I spend an hour in that place perusing all manner of old electronics, go across the street the a favorite Vietnamese Pho place for lunch, then meet the guy on the way home. 

In the end, I was able to get all of the above done, and get home by 2:30 at which point, I grabbed my son and took him to his basketball game! I was gone a total of 7 hours. I spent $305, and about 3 gallons of gas (I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid). I sold the T500 for $200 while at the same time upgrading my HTPC's SSD from 64Gb to 128Gb. I sold one of the 2 Dell power adapters for $20. This all leaves me with $85 of expenditures not yet recouped, but I still have the E6400 which will bring at least another $150. Also, this whole escaped was funded by a sale of another E6400 from the night before, for $200. So, I had a great time, playing, will make somewhere between $70-100, after getting RAM for the new-build and upgrading my HTPC. 

That is now we mine Craigslist!




 

Today's Sweet Spot in Daily Laptops

Yesterday, as I was discussing updates it occurred to me that I haven't updated that which this Blog is pretty much all about! ...... What's the best technology deals out there right now for the average "Joe". A few posts back, I had briefly discussed the Dell Latitude E6400 and how it was a really good deal for my clients, but even then I didn't get into the nitty-gritty of the specs and what-all that means. 

In my opinion, right at this moment, there's not a better deal than the Intel Core 2 Duo processor'd machines. We're at a point where many (if not most) mainstream software can take advantage of more than one processor core. And the ones that can't, can run on one, while the machine can continue to do other tasks. Now this is anecdotal evidence of course, but on a fairly regular basis, I work on people's machines (as well as our stable of them too). As far as doing things on them, I can break them down into 3 groups. Single core, P4/P4-M, and Pentium M machines. "Core" Duo/Quad machines, and newer i3/i5/i7. Although, I don't deal with the latter much; I do, on occasion end up working on them as well. What I've found to be the case is that there's a huge difference between the 1st and 2nd group, but little between the 2nd and 3rd. Now before you get yourself into a twist, let me note that, we are talking about, a decent amount of RAM (3 to 4Gb), running an operating system that won't bog it down, meaning XPP for P4/P-M, and Windows 7 for Core Duo/2nd Gen Core machines, AND doing typical tasks, like downloads, Internet, etc. NOT, Photoshop and transcoding video! 

The big factor is this; an adequate amount of RAM that isn't going to kill your budget. Not only do P4-M/P-M machines run slow, single-core processors, they use the older spec DDR (or DDR1) RAM in them. Sure, you can get 1Gb sticks, and get those machines up to 2Gbs total, but the cost of 1Gb DDR is pretty much the same as 2Gb DDR2! So, the irony is that the cheaper machine to buy is more expensive to upgrade. Besides which, the chipsets typically limit them to 2Gb total anyway, even if you could afford to buy bigger modules. So, here's how it works out in $$. You can go buy a T42 for say, $50, then you want to max out the RAM so it'll run decent with XP/SP3. That'll cost you about $70, making your total $120. Whereas on any given day, you can buy a T60 for about $75, or better yet, the T61 that I just bought for $90. You and put 2Gb of RAM into it for anywhere from $25-30 making your total somewhere around $100, or if you want to spend as much as you would have on that maxed out T42, you'd have a T60/T61 with 4Gb of RAM in it. Plus it'll have a Core Duo, or might even have a Core 2 Duo in it which is WAY faster than your P-M. ....And I haven't even gotten into the cost to size differential between the PATA that the T42 uses versus, the SATA that the T60/T61 uses!

The thing that made it jump out at me was that last week, I had a client who asked for a decent laptop to use for the next 2-3 years. They had a $200-250 budget, so I started looking around in the C2D type of corporate machines which are about 3 years old. Within minutes of each other, I was able to find both a Dell Latitude E6400, and a ThinkPad T61 for less than $100 shipped. Both were fully equipped, with hard drives, at least 3Gb of RAM. The ThinkPad had a bigger 15.4" screen and the dell had the bigger hard drive. I got them the Dell because it was smaller and lighter. If it hadn't been someone who was expecting to travel constantly with their machine, I'd have probably done the more rugged ThinkPad with the magnesium skeleton, instead of the Dell with the Magnesium outer casing. These are both "business class" machines that sold for between $1500 and $2000 originally. They'll certainly be tougher than the typical notebook that they'd been able to buy at Walmart for $400-500!

These are the computers I recommend because they offer the most "bang-for-the-buck" and they are what I have my family using. Both my wife and son use the bigger 15.4" ThinkPad T61. Granted they are the higher end ones with discrete graphics chips, high resolution screens and have upgraded SSD boot drives, but the guts of those machines aren't any different. 

I have my daughter on the X61 from the same generation. Similar technology, but in a smaller package that's easier for her to handle. These things are also great deals, in that they are often found in the sub-$100 range as well. Yes, I have her RAM maxed out and an SSD in there as a boot drive as well, but those are pretty cheap upgrades if you know where and how to buy.

In the meantime, I'm already scouting out what we are going to do when it's time to upgrade. There'll come the day when DDR2 won't be worth it to buy compared to DDR3, so it pays to be prepared! But for right now: this is the Sweet Spot!