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While the pull to buy the latest and greatest device for yourself or your children may be strong, a far better choice, both for your wallet and the environment, might be to purchase an older model that's been refurbished, which can save you money and be a better use of resources.
The market for used previously owned electronics is quite large, and that may be good for consumers in some aspects, as there is a lot of choice, it can also be quite the minefield to navigate, because not only is there a big difference between a used device and a refurbished one, there is also quite a big gray area when it comes to the quality of the refurbishing. A used device sold directly by the original owner to another owner comes with no guarantees of any kind, and any assurances given by the seller that the device works great and has been well taken care of have to be taken with a grain of salt - after all, who's going to be able to sell you a gadget after telling you that it's basically been rode hard and put away wet?
One way to make sure you're buying a refurbished computer or mobile device that will work well and last long enough to pay for itself is to look for one that has been refurbished following the guidelines of the R2 Standard of Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI). Computers and mobile devices that have gone through this standardized process are labeled as "R2 Ready for Reuse," which means that they have been tested and refurbished by a certified company, and have had a fully licensed operating system installed on them. In order to retain this R2 certification, these companies must undergo annual inspections to verify that their work adheres to "the highest industry standards for testing, repair, and data security."
To find a refurbisher that meets the R2 standards, and that sells direct to consumers, a list of companies selling R2 refurbished desktops and laptops is available on the SERI site, as well as a listing of R2 recyclers that can responsibly recycle your old electronics.
Our kids get our old laptops, surplus RPis, tablets we got for free as promos, because the death of the device is only one spilled glass of juice away. Guessing many other Soylentils do the same. Has anyone had experience with R2 certified devices?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:04AM
Have you seen how cheap NEW is today? Less than $100 for a new computer that not only fucks your precious face by the book, you can literally code python scripts in the palm of your shitstained hand. It's 2015, people. New computers aren't worth shit anymore.
(Score: 2) by No Respect on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:23AM
The big joke here is "R2". Whatever the fuck that is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:31AM
The big joke is saving resources by selling to consumers. If they consume the product, what's left to refurbish or recycle once they're done? Customer? What the fuck is a customer? All the customers went extinct as soon as they were issued credit cards and they started accumulating lots of debt, right?
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday August 08 2015, @10:36AM
A few years ago I picked up a second-hand 30" iMac for £75 ($116 today) specifically to give to an 11yr-old kid who wanted a new computer for his birthday. It did need a little bit of fixing up (new TIM on the graphics card) and some hacks to keep it stable (max fan speed all the time) but it lasted 18 months before it finally died - that's £4.16 a month, pretty good. I'll be amazed if you can get a new complete system with a 30" screen for $100.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @10:42PM
In the USA in 2015, 1 in 4 people can't find a real job. [shadowstats.com]
(Note that the govt's numbers are complete crap.)
Among USAians who do have fulltime work[1], many make the $7.25/hr federal minimum.
That's $1160/month.
For a lot of folks, finding an extra $100 for a computer is a challenge.[2]
[1] ...and 40hr/wk is increasingly rare these days because that incurs employer costs for benefits.
[2] ...and paying workers poorly is a downward spiral:
Little money to spend; reduced demand for more goods to restock empty shelves; no need for some of the current stock clerks; rinse and repeat for other businesses in the community.
It's called a failure of The Multiplier Effect.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:44AM
I have a refurbished tab pro 12.2 that I picked up almost a year ago. It looks brand new still and never gives me any problems. I don't know if it was certified though. I am considering a refurbished surface pro and will keep this in mind but my usual solution is "factory refurbished" and that seems to work for me.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:49AM
I bought a not-even-refurbished genuinely-broken laptop from my neighborhood junk shop, zero-filled the hard drive, and it works fine. Sure it fails SMART on every boot, but what do I care? It's good enough for Windows 10.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday August 08 2015, @10:44AM
I couldn't give old computers away several years ago. No one wanted them or would take them. I had to give them to a recycling center. What's changed? Is there really more demand for old computers now than several years ago?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by SDRefugee on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:21PM
It all depends, I think, on just how old the systems you're talking about are.. To my understanding, anything pre-Intel Core2 is declined by most refurbing places.. I help out a small local charity with its IT issues, and when we set up the main office, I suggested to the CEO that we buy Dell offlease systems from the Dell Financial Services
webstore.. We were able to buy 10 Optiplex systems and screens, models that were a bit over 3 years old, with a 1 year warantee, for about 1/4 of the cost of new "build-to-order" systems. Perfectly good systems for the strictly office-work that the systems would used for..
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:54PM
As SDRefugee notes, "old" is relative.
In my book, hardware has been Good Enough(tm) for a very long time.
I have a Pentium 2 that can still do the things I need to do.
(Linux FTW.)
Of course, since I don't run Windoze, I don't need bleeding edge hardware.
That so many folks -think- they do need the latest hardware for email or photos or music is a testament to salesmenship and Lamestream Media.
{Comment about the bankrupt nature of The Consumer Society goes here.}
Joe Average should have a personal nerd to inform him of the wide range of options available.
...and, as I noted the other day, if all your guy knows is Windoze, you need a better guy.
Where I am, there are still places where you can find one of those in meatspace. [lalugs.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday August 09 2015, @05:00AM
Processing power improvement has largely plateaued for the last few years. My CADCAM worstation at work is a three year old 3770K, and the latest and greatest CPU, the 6700K, is only marginally better. About decade ago a span of three years could be expected to allow you to double the power of a system build for the same budget.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:23PM
...I've found that the tech industry is in a rather interesting situation right now.
I don't think that there's ever been a time when a computer that is about ten years old could run the latest software perfectly fine for 99% of users. Not only that, but it also appears that it's the first time that most people are realizing that they don't need to buy a new computer every 3 years.
Anecdote time: I recently ran KDE, also known as one of the heaviest DEs on a 1.2GHz, low voltage Core2 Duo with godawful Intel integrated graphics. The fact that it was snappy and responsive on such a machine is really telling.
Anecdote bordering on numerical fact time: I also recently bought a secondhand Elitebook 2740p for a total of $90 (not including SSD and $5 power supply). This was originally a $2000 laptop, and that shows in how well it's built. In terms of CPU (i7 620M) speed, it can beat the crap out of the $300 laptop I bought in 2014 and generally compete with modern i3s and i5s. In terms of build quality, the keyboard, and mouse, there's simply no comparison. The 2014 laptop comes with a clickpad (unusable), a chicklet keyboard (also unusable), a 16:9 display (awkward to hold AND pointless for work!), and build quality to match its price.
Less anecdote, more sad reality: If anyone's cared to check, you can get the Xeon version of the i7 920 online for $4, or even an overclocking board with RAM and i7-9xx series CPU all for around $150-$200. Given that Core2 and K8 are plenty for what most people do, this is excellent. If a user isn't doing crazy floating point stuff, they should absolutely buy used over new, because we're at a point where buying something new just doesn't make any economic sense.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.