How does one find such retired laptops? As an individual hobbyist in the US, would I just monitor eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook?
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Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Find out if there are any corporate off-lease machines being sold in your area. USFF machines are frequently used as mini desktops or point of sale computers then sold off for peanuts when warranties are done. Especially look at i3-8xxx generation, as they don’t support windows 11 fully.
yo_scottie_oh@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yes. EBay and Amazon have a certified refurbished thing with warranties for a little more money, or monitor local classified sites if you can inspect them. I’ve bought a couple off Kijiji here in Canada, which is a bit like Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. The sellers didn’t advertise that they were a business selling off-lease stuff, but you can tell by the number of laptops they post.
rmuk@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
One hundred percent go for USFF. Even the cheapest, most basic processor will smash server roles because it’s not having to power desktop applications, graphics, window managers, etc.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Any corporate fleet machines, really. Corporate C-suite executives always demand the best laptops on the market… They also demand the newest laptops on the market. This means there’s always fresh stock of last year’s corporate laptop hitting the used market. And they’re almost always gently used, because they just sat docked on some executive’s desk for a year.
Those $2000 laptops often get dropped on eBay for like $250, because the random Accounting person who has to auction them off doesn’t really care how much they sell for; They’re just checking a “was sold to recoup costs” checkbox.