Some E Waste FYI

SSD drives will not replace regular drives for some time. The ISSUE with an SSD drive (yes it is an issue somewhat) is that SSD drives only have so many read/write cycles before the cell goes bad (think sectors on a regular HD)...I had discussed this in a previous thread. Once too many cells go bad, then the drive essentially cannot relocate info and is dead. This sounds fine until you start saving and deleting alot of small files, browser cache, etc etc. Whereas, a mechanical drive can last an extraordinary amount of time if it is taken care of (not overheated, banged around etc).

I use a SSD drive for my programs (they do not overwrite info often) and have a regular mechanical drive (also for sheer size...up to 4 TB per drive on those these days) for all of my data. My machine is SCREAMING fast because of the setup.

just thought I would give that nugget of info out there for people thinking about SSD drives etc. If you set them up correctly, they are screaming fast...just have a regular mechanical drive for all the files you save and delete. :)

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Originally Posted by armygreywolf

I ran technical preview on several standard optiplexes, G35/G41 chipset nobilis rigs and a few other things...I'm of the camp what with the additional user friendly features people have come to expect from windows and android that a dual core machine will NOT be sufficient in any respect. Microsoft SAYS the minimum specifications for Windows 10 wil be 1Ghz proc, 2GB ram, 16GB hard drive space etc...the preview was still directX 9, requiring many features to be disabled. This minimum spec is to accomodate tablets, phones and other devices. The PC specification is expected to be a multithreaded dual core of 2Ghz or higher (four threads total of 8Ghz) and 3GB ram minimum, 48GB of HDD space and possibility of disabled features if the machine is not DX10 capable, which, most optiplex 755/760/780 and like machines of other brands are not. Point is, upgrading to 10 may not be feasible for many currently operating machines. Many people will do the upgrade, realize the machine is not cutting the mustard and our market is FURTHER saturated. I guess what I am saying to you all is plan to phase out your core 2 duo machines fairly soon, I expect the windows 10 push to crush whats left of the dual core market.

Ohh and I wanted to touch on one subject. Retail sales. Tablet sales over the 2013 and 2014 holidays were beat by PCs (laptops and desktops) two years in a row according to new egg and best buy. New egg says theyve sold more desktops in the last two years than theyve sold the five years prior. Dell claims their business sales on smaller machines (SFF) are up over all other form factors. Dell also says Latitude and Inspiron sales are up. Best buy claims the surface pro is outselling the ipad and that lenovos and dells are the hottest selling laptops. Do I think our future is bleak? Nope, not at all. Desktops will always have a place and quite frankly, all in one sales are a good thing, Most are aluminum cases (due to thermal and rigidity reasons) most use laptop type motherboards (also good) and most use either an on board power supply with a nice large aluminum heatsink or a large all copper heatsink. Reselling the standalone 150W power bricks HP uses is always a winner, people trip over, fray and break them all the time.

Other things I am noticing is the LARGE form factor tablets, that is tablets larger than 12 inches. AKA laptops without a keyboard. These are the trend, tablets with horsepower. As for desktops, enthusiast market is millions strong, if anything it will make the scrap market for desktops even better years from now because more and more machines will be gaming oriented.

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Army,

You mention SFF's getting more popular. Do you know of a buyer for DVD+RW for these? They are the smaller, thinner ones.

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Originally Posted by matador

Exactly, though technically we're on the Third generation of the i-Series CPU. I think SATA hard drives will stay relevant, though- at least the larger ones. They don't make many 1TB or larger SSDs.... yet.

I'm interested in seeing how Windows 10 does. It'll either go over very well, or 7 will still be king.

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It's hard to say with the 3 gb/sec SATA's. For me: It's always about trying to identify what my customer wants and then finding a way to meet that need. I think i spent an hour and a half this morning over coffee with a new customer just getting to know her & building a friendly rapport. This particular one is middle class. It's unpaid time, but in the future i'll know just the right balance of quality in workmanship & cost to best meet her requirements.

You kinda have to do the same thing with hard drives & figure out what the market is looking for. That's a toughie because your average consumer has little or no idea of what they're buying.

Somebody who is really into the whole computer thing is likely to want the latest and the best that's available. It's a relatively small niche market though. It's so easy to say that what you want is what everybody should have or should want.

One of the most difficult things that i've run into as a Master tradesman is how to communicate with my customers. I have to stop and say to myself ... what if i was a person that had never driven a nail in the wall ? Would i be able to understand what this guy is trying to get across to me ? You kinda have to dumb it down and make it easier for them to understand. Once they understand the basics they can make an informed choice about what they want.

I'm rambling here but the debut of Windows 10 is likely to have a big impact on things. It may go down like AGW said and render everything but the most recent generation of tech obsolete.

I suspect it may go the opposite direction completely. Bear in mind .... this is supposed to be the last & final version of an operating system that Microsoft ever releases. If Microsoft is smart, they will have designed this OS to run well on just about any machine large or small. That way it's on as many machines as possible and they can hog up so much space that it shuts out the competition.

It would be like any other yearly subscription service like an anti-virus program. If you're selling a subscription you want to make sure that it has a universal appeal to the broadest market possible. (If you focus just meeting the needs of a niche market you're limiting yourself.)

There's just no telling .... it could revitalize the core 2 duo market if it's lighter on system resources. A lot of folks haven't even upgraded from XP yet and that will be four operating systems back when 10 makes it's debut.

About all we can do is wait and see. I was going to wait on my core 2's that are running win 7 pro genuine and upgrade them to win 10 at the end of the month. That might give them a whole new market appeal ?

See ... your average customer knows little or nothing about the specs. They might be vaguely aware that Win 10 is the latest & greatest thing to have because they see it advertised as new in the stores.

If you can offer a quality refurb at 1/3 the cost of new they might bite. :)

To add insight as an east coast buyer I would echo everything AGW, Matador and PTS are seeing as well. DDR2 is depreciating much faster in relation to DDR1 and the viewpoint of the average customer has changed. They don't know much about what the specs mean but they are not thinking in units of Gigabytes for the HDDs anymore, it is in clean units of Terabytes (i.e. 0.5 TB, 1TB, 1.5TB). Knowing know what kind of sales the SFF markets are doing in desktops it explains why anything less than 2GB per module in RAM is almost not economical anymore, motherboards only have so many RAM slots and they don't want to waste the space on a single Gigabyte. And without beating a dead horse I won't go into dual core CPUs/systems. It is a great learning experience to strike when the iron is hot as good prices go away faster nowadays. If you are sitting on resellable material it could take a decade a two to fall back into notoriety as far as the vintage market seems to work so no reason to wait any longer to take the time to learn what you have! Best of luck to the fellow buyers on the forum, I know we are feeling some pressure these days.

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Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream

I'm using a Dell gaming computer with Vista. It does well on dial up with the modem it came with. In the past I had to use external modems with the older machines I was using.

Most of the salvage computers I have are from the first computers put out for small business up to computers from about 10 to 15 years ago. I don't have a lot of computers compared to what others around here deal with. Maybe a hundred of them or so. I keep finding out that I have far more of things then I can remember from all the years of hauling it home and storing it away for later. I have computers up to those using Windows Pro.

I have been having a blast from the past going through areas around the yard that I haven't been in for years. Gives me interesting and entertaining things to do to keep busy and try and keep making a go at Life with the economy factor that requires all the more thought and energy to keep on top of.

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You have Dial Up?!?

I also have been having that "I forgot I had this" issue every time I look for something in the garage.

< smiles > It's amazing that they've gone to rating HDD's in terabytes these days. It really doesn't seem all that long ago that they transitioned from rating them in megabytes to gigabytes. Things are in a constant state of change so you just have to roll with it & adapt accordingly.

As much as anything it's probably trial & error to find something that works. With the core 2 duo's on the way out a processor change to a quad might sell. Perhaps upgrade the memory or throw in an SSD as the primary drive with a large capacity traditional drive for storage.

You probably learn more from your failures than your successes. No harm in intentionally going out there and making your mistake as long as you aren't too heavily invested in it.

Worse case ... you can always scrap em' out.

Childhood, I was just kidding anyway.

In my experience of escrap and computers (and I have absolutely no idea of what 1/2 of the info above means, except 1gb and DDR..) and plugging in found computers to see whats on them.

1. Most people buy a computer and use it for a few things, download some rap and bubblegum music, store some camera pics on it and thats it. From there on it just sits there untill they get sick of looking at the $1200 they blew 3 years ago. And then dump it. Not even try and sell it, just chuck it onto a big pile of scrapmetal and rubbish.

2. Once the batterys dead. That takes 2 or 3 years. Either buy a new battery for it. Which hardly ever happens.
Or buy abrand new peice of future escrap with a brand new battery, warrantee and the fact they know that whatever they brought is the latest and greatest thing invented. For the next 6 months.....

I cannot find a 4.8 volt rechargable battery for my Ericsson T18s. Now I LOVE that cellphone. I paid $300 for it in 1997
. I have brought every one of them I could find on the secondhand market. So I have about 15 of them.....
and every one of them has a bad battery by now. I can't even find a battery pack with 4 AAA NiCads in it to repack my old battery cases. But if I could I would and I would carry it with me everywhere.

But instead, I buy a brandnew Android tablet/cellphone for NZ$70 (US$50) new battery and all and 2 week standby. And it sits where I left it.