@tinker@infosec.exchang

Yes! All this!

I've bought three refurb machines from eBay, inexpensive. There are a lot of fleet machines, they are often little used. I favor the little "dentist office" Optiplex SFF (small form factor) machines. Yes Moore's law residue gets you fast CPUs for cheap. Shop by RAM size.

On one machine I like with low memory I asked the seller if he had add-on ram. I got 8gb more for 16 bucks.

I personally replaced the thermal paste. I was skeptical that machines need that but it's true; dried and it looked gstpped. You could probably watch CPU temps and decide if you need it.

I paid 250 for a think book x13, and 80 bucks for 16gb, 4ghz i7 mini desktops.

Those are just my prefs. There's a lot of very good machines out there used refurb.

@aj @spacelizard

@tinker @aj @spacelizard Hear, hear!

@tinker @aj @spacelizard +1.

I would also recommend looking at Back Market, if you're in a country where they operate.

In Spain, they are pretty competitive, and I know a few folks there - and they are serious about reducing e-waste and are a very mission-driven company.

@tinker @aj @spacelizard
I'm going to third this. Refurbished laptops tend to come from companies refreshing their kit and are typically from the manufacturer's business line rather than consumer line: a sturdy workhorse of a laptop that will work day in, day out, solid for office or university work, probably not great for gaming. Things like Dell XPS or Lenovo ThinkPad.

Aim for a machine from 2020, just before Windows 11 came out: those laptops came with 10 but are recent enough for 11.

@tinker
Depending on the requirements, don't go too far back, though.. We've had a 2016 laptop sitting around, that our 6yo now uses to play Minecraft. It's manageable, but only barely, especially when you start adding mods. It quickly degrades to 5-10 fps or worse, at least with some particular combinations.

He loves building stuff, and mods like Create along with its entire ecosystem are awesome, so it's annoying to have to carefully curate the bare minimum set..
@aj @spacelizard

@tinker @aj @spacelizard Agreed. My main laptop was a Lenovo ThinkPad X121 for many years. Last year I "upgraded" to a X280.

@tinker @aj @spacelizard used Dells are awesome because they have LVFS support too!

@tinker
Thank you for pointing out that Moore's Law no longer applies to laptops in any meaningful way. I went quickly from "WTF is he talking about?" to "Oh... OH!" in merely seconds. And you are right, it doesn't anymore.
@aj @spacelizard