Hardware Where can I buy older laptops in Bulk?

philip11

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I was thinking like 1 GB of RAM 2.0 GigaHertz processor without a OS So I can install Ubuntu (Or Mint) and sell it I have looked on http://alibaba.com and eBay and Craigs List but no luck unless they are Very expensive for what they are actually worth.

So where could I buy these in bulk?


Thanks.
 

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Look up computer wholesalers. You usually have to contact them directly, since they won't always have a website catalogue (many do this to keep their prices competitive). When you buy wholesale, you almost always get a better deal than when you buy retail, but the process is a little less straight forward (since it's all about the numbers).
 

FAST6191

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Do you want new ones or will old ones do- it might take some doing but if you wish to offer computer disposal services to companies (you have to pay to have things disposed of when you are a company although manufacturers are now including such services) with an eye to reselling the devices. You will want to figure out how to securely dispose of data (DBAN works well enough) on a system and be able to demonstrate that to your potential sources (companies are quite paranoid about it even to the point where they will actively avoid donating their old hardware and incur a cost in the process)- you might end up speaking to someone that does not know much but equally you might be speaking to a sysadmin or some such that does know what goes so make sure you do (this includes technical stuff, comparable disposal costs and if available any relevant tax breaks and accounting tricks*).

*laptops will probably count as an asset and if you can work it into it or indeed figure out a way to get things classified some other way (depending upon your target company what it will want to be called might well change- some will have it as a sale of assets, some will have it as a disposal of electronic waste, some will have it as a recycling program, some will have it as a IT service to sanitise old laptops for security reasons and it goes on).

Trouble is you are not the only person doing this- I have a couple of clients that occasionally get me to redo laptops and several more that buy their old company laptops so they can drag them to Africa or Asia with them to give to their associates over there (when your main alternative is a piece of Chinese junk you tend to welcome an old dell or HP thing and it can also pay for a good chunk of your plane ticket even with mandatory donation to the customs weekend fun fund) or otherwise use them (I am guessing web, emails and basic office type stuff would be part of your sales pitch/description) and I know of several more that do this on a more industrial scale or do it as part of a charity thing (such charities are probably also going to be a drain upon your supplies of older but still potentially useful laptops). The main problems I see beyond dust, batteries* and software are power supplies and sockets on the way out (easy enough to sort) and hard drives that have seen better days (again trivial to fix but hard drives that die several months down the line are one of the main reasons I do not sell second hand computers and replacing hard drives every time seriously eats into your margins).

*even if you buy old stock from somewhere it might well have been sitting in a warehouse and have the battery well into the deep discharge regime.

Hopefully I have given you something to look at and I hope I have not discouraged you (you can earn some nice extra money for a couple of hours work in the evenings and such but it is very hard to do it to levels resembling a wage).
 

FAST6191

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Picking out the relevant stuff
The processor Intel Core i7-2670 QM (2.2 GHz)
The mainboard chipset Intel HM65
4 GB DDR3 1333
7200 rpm 750 GB hard drive.
17 inches 1920 x 1080 screen.
GT 635 M at 2 GB

The highest price being 500 USD and the lowest being 100.....

There was a bit of advice that ran something like if a deal sounds too good to be true it probably is (I doubt I could even find a crackhead to sell me a freshly stolen one at that price). Maybe if it twist the specs to be a bit more realistic (smaller 5400 drive, lower res* and smaller screen) I could do 500USD for a refurb. Equally buying stuff in from China** is a tricky proposition when it comes to the keyboard which you should probably be aware of- I often enough have to tweak or find import keyboards in various parts of the world to get someone something they are used to.

*I have a reasonably hard time putting together a decent list of laptops with screens that are that kind of res for clients to pick from these days. They might have a nice HDMI out that does 1080p but so rarely does the screen do it.

**also common is saying one thing online like this and delivering another knowing there is next to nothing you can do about it. See also my cheap Chinese junk comment earlier.
 

Midna

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I was thinking like 1 GB of RAM 2.0 GigaHertz processor without a OS So I can install Ubuntu (Or Mint) and sell it I have looked on http://alibaba.com and eBay and Craigs List but no luck unless they are Very expensive for what they are actually worth.

So where could I buy these in bulk?


Thanks.
See if there's a Freegeek computer recycling depot in your city
 

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Core i7 for that price, and from Shenzhen?
It's likely that you'll be getting ARM7 processors with 256MB RAM and Windows CE. It sounds really shady. At best, you'll be getting Atom processors.
 

FAST6191

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alibaba is not a bad site if you know how to work it but I too would be shocked if you got a reasonable quality device with what was listed at that price.

Running dos- not really that surprising/puzzling. You can get a nice version of of FreeDOS these days and indeed I quite often see motherboards bundled with a copy of it or something similar (if they shipped the laptops with a Chinese version of windows or a mickey mouse version of windows they would get slapped down hard).
 

Luigi2012SM64DS

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Click This

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I have a laptop from emachines that has dual boot win 7 and ubutnu.
but its not for sale
Why do you even post?
Your right, he told me in RL that he just wants him to have more Post counts so he can get more ranks. Lol, troll of the day.

Plus, he doesn't even live in bulk.
stop lying
Stop spamming.

He's a troll hes a lier, not me, anyways back on topic..... I think this person can look for older laptops in bulk here
 

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