A Note Re: Old PCs w/Obsolete CPUs

[mrerick]

For several years, I have been buying used "obsolete" computers from our local University's surplus property office. These are often desktop or laptop machines that are around 7 years old.

Right now they are routinely selling Intel Core i5 based Thinkpad laptops for little money. They must remove the harddrives before selling them, so with purchase of a 128GB SSD and installation of a Linux distribution like Fedora 29, you end up with a very fast and high capacity modern laptop machine. A typical completed machine runs $125 or less.

If you live near large government organizations or school institutions keep on the lookout for such sources. You can also routinely buy very capable machines as "Refurb" lease returns from a number of sellers.

I recently got some workstation class Xeon based Lenovo E20 machines for $75 each. That's what I'm using for a server at home now.

BTW, Lenovo makes a very nice external keyboard.