Great to see such good gestures from the community. I have 2 laptops which are not working(one with motherboard problem). Is their any way I can dump them as they are just taking up space in my home.
PS - I am from India.
Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#32Ah, memories. I started our company in 2006 with a very heavy, very yellow, 486 compaq laptop. Yes, I'm fully aware there are better machines I could have used for a fairly nominal amount, but all I needed was bash, mutt and vim, and money was better spent on food and water. Graduated to using a "broken (needed a new HDD)" ibook when the roof decided it didn't feel like keeping rain out one night. That doesn't help o…
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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never used one, but I'm surprised at the apparent gap between such suggestions and the lack of availability of such devices. I mean, if a Pi can run perfectly well for $35, where's the place where you can just go and get a ready-to-go PC for under $50, BYO salvaged peripherals? It doesn't quite seem to make sense? PC/mobile manufacturing is so competitive. Isn't this a market anyone wants?
Isn't this a market anyone wants? There are plenty of competitors in the $150-$250 netbook/chromebook market. Not to mention things like the Intel Compute Stick and its competitors like the MK802. Not to mention tablets and phones. A raspberry pi might only cost $35, but don't forget you'll need an SD card, and a power supply, and a case, and a wifi dongle, and a keyboard, and a mouse, and a monitor, and HDMI and pow…
You really don't need a case. No wifi either, if the desk isn't too far from the cable/telephone box. Spare power supplies, keyboards and mice probably aren't hard to find either. But yeah, it's more than 35$ in most cases.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#34I'm on the southside and have an old p4 2.4ghz w/ 2gb ddr2, some asus motherboard, gpu and a coupla hdds. Unfortunately there's no case but if you can come grab it it's all yours. Also a raspi 1 model b and 22" lcd.
Email me hnpc at eggsampler dort com
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#35Great to see such good gestures from the community. I have 2 laptops which are not working(one with motherboard problem). Is their any way I can dump them as they are just taking up space in my home. PS - I am from India.
I'm pretty suspicious about motherboard problems. Lot of computer shops simply dish out "motherboard problem saar gib me 10000 rupees" rather than investigating what really went wrong.
BTW, you can salvage the hard drive, possibly the memory, and other parts from the laptop easily. Hard drives can pretty much be substituted on any other laptop but memory will need to be of the same type and compatible.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#36I think you need to sort out your life before you continue to work on your startup. I don't say that to criticize you, I am just being realistic. It's disadvantageous in almost every way to be absolutely broke (mostly for obvious reasons) while trying to pursue something as amibitious as a tech startup. You're really pushing the odds.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never used one, but I'm surprised at the apparent gap between such suggestions and the lack of availability of such devices. I mean, if a Pi can run perfectly well for $35, where's the place where you can just go and get a ready-to-go PC for under $50, BYO salvaged peripherals? It doesn't quite seem to make sense? PC/mobile manufacturing is so competitive. Isn't this a market anyone wants?
Probably because it has to run a linux desktop and most consumers balk at anything that isn't windows.
Recently, I've been thinking about how weird this is. By which I mean that many of the same people who would balk at Linux because it's not Windows wouldn't balk at a Mac and don't balk at Android instead of an iPhone.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone have an old computer laying around unused in Brisbane, AU?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably because it has to run a linux desktop and most consumers balk at anything that isn't windows.
I don't think that's true anymore. Not in a world where a 4 person house has 4 smart-phones, 2 tablets, etc. Not when the device costs $50 (assuming you can get peripherals free). For $50 you can take some risk. It can't be a huge learning curve but it doesn't need to do everything you need a computer to do for the next 4 years, which was the paradigm that lead to Windows dominance. IE, if I'm buying a PC in 2002, th…
To sell the Chromebook idea, Google had to address the XY problem for productivity applications. People will say "I need Office" because they want a spreadsheet and a word processor. By simply making people aware of their apps, Google was able to get many people to forgo the "Office XY" problem [And the iPhone XY problem via Android].
Apple and Microsoft ingrained a lot of intellectual shortcuts in regard to the way people in the mainstream think about computing in their quests for market share. So of course has Google. In fairness, these abstractions simplify the daunting complexity of deciding among a vast domain of computing options.