Craigslist Deals 7
February 6th, 2010 by ComputerBob
I’ve told you about several of my Craigslist deals, but it’s been almost 4 months since I found my last one — a network laser printer that I’m still really happy about.
Since then, I’ve looked for a third computer to add to my network, to serve as an NFS file server for my wife’s and my computers.
Judging by the normal prices I’ve seen on Craigslist for the past several weeks, I figured that it was going to cost me around $100 to get something similar to our existing PCs’ AMD Athlon XP 2400+ and 2GHz Pentium 4 CPUs.
But this morning, on Craigslist, I found an even better deal.
I got a Compaq Presario SR1630NX with:
- AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor
- 1.5 GB of RAM
- 80GB hard drive
- Integrated ATI Radeon Xpress 200 graphics
- Integrated 10/100 ethernet card
- Lightscribe DVD-RW drive
- Keyboard
- Brand new optical wheel mouse
- Compaq stereo USB-powered speakers
- Brand new 400-watt power supply
It looks absolutely immaculate and brand new, both inside and out — in fact, it still has the manufacturer’s clear plastic film that protects the case’s faceplate and drives. Its original power supply must have been defective, because it blew before the original owner had a chance to use the computer very much. Instead of having it fixed, she just put it aside and bought another new PC. The guy who sold it to me is her friend, and he happened to see it at her house. He bought it from her, fixed it up and put it up for sale. So it’s practically new old stock.
One thing I noticed right away was that it was almost completely silent as the seller booted it up, running a newly installed Windows XP Home Edition (fully upgraded with SP3 and all the latest updates). I’m going to pull out that Windows hard drive and store it (in case I ever sell the PC to a Windows user). I’ll replace it with one of my other hard drives, and I’ll install Debian Linux, so it will be running the same OS as my other two PCs.
As I said, I had expected to pay around $100 for a PC that would be as old, and probably a little slower, than our existing PCs, just to use it as a simple file server.
But instead, my new, 4-year-old Compaq is faster than either of our other two computers, so it’s going to be my new main PC. And our other two PCs will “trickle down” into their new roles. My old main PC that I built 7 years ago (the AMD Athlon XP 2400+) will become my wife’s new PC, and her old PC (the 2GHz Pentium 4) will become our file server.
Oh, and here’s the best part: My new Compaq PC only cost me $114.
Permalink:
http://www.computerbob.com/wp/craigslist-deals-7.php
Tags:
Consumer Info, DIY, Images, Personal, Tech Support