Sell whole vs parts /boards . A poll . Just your opinion about your practice or met

Every machine is a judgement call. There has got to be at least fifteen or twenty different ways of making money with it.

I've got three machines loaded w/ Vista that i refurbished sitting on the shelf. They run really well. The OS is still supported but Vista has such a bad rep that there's no market for them. I could wipe the drives and load win 7 but the cost of a new operating system w/ COA is so high that it would eat up all of the profit margin. I use them in the shop instead.

Ran across two win 7 machines over the past year. There were OS problems with each. With the first, the OS was completely trashed but for a total cost of about 30$ i got fresh installation discs from the mfgr and ended up with a virtually new machine. ( kept that one for myself.) The second i was able to repair the software and reload the os. Ended up with a net profit of about 230.00$ when that one sold.

Not a big fan of Mac but i ran across an older laptop that needed a power supply. Bought an aftermarket PS, verified that it was operable, and then sold it to a company out in Cali. that specializes in refurbing them. They even paid the shipping ! That was a case where it was much more profitable to sell whole.

I've parted out any number of machines that were obsolete over the past year. Maybe fifty ? There are no local buyers of whole computers so parting out is the only viable option. The boards get shipped out to a buyer. Things like copper, aluminum, motors, power boards, wire, etc. will be sold at the scrapyard about fifty miles away once a pickup truck load has been accumulated.

I've had some machines where it was profitable to resell some of the parts. Ran across a nice quad core gaming board w/ four 2 gb pc-2 3200 high end memory chips. Used the memory for two machines that i was upgrading and sold the processor.

The point is that it varies. It's not a straight sell whole or part out. It's all situational.

Question 4: Why do it ?

a: It's fun and interesting
b: It's something new to learn. ( And there's A LOT to learn.)
c: I've been running a (small) profitable business of my own for about 13 years now. It's not really about the money but i'm curious to see if if this new thing can be made to work on a very small scale.
d: I like to stay busy. This gives me something useful to do when things are slow with my primary business.
e: I've met some good people along the way.
f: It's an investment in the future. I'll be getting near retirement age in another eight to ten years. If i can get it up and running smoothly by then it would be something than an old fulla could do to generate a little extra income every month in his golden years.