Back in Black (part deux): Future Con-man?

So this is part 2 of my 2008 comeback blog, its going to be about computers, so if you don't like that, read the other part, which is about Christmas and Aberystwyth instead.

So a few days ago, my mate John's PC blew up, so guess who he called. I haven't actually seen it yet, but I gather the power supply blew up, chucks of metal came out the back of the fan, and unsurprisingly, John freaked out, and it hasn't booted since. This PC and me have quite a history already, since it was Jamie's PC a few months ago, until I built him a new one, so he gave his old one to John. Its about 4 years old, AMD Athlon, 1GB Ram, that is about all I can remember. So I'm not sure if its just the power supply, or weather he'll need a new motherboard as well. But we figured, it would probably just be cheaper and quicker to find another second hand computer, rather then try to find parts for this old one. So we wandered around Aber for a while, looked in several shops. John had seen one he liked, for about 35 quid, but that had been sold, and all that were left were really old ones. So we tried another shop, where the man offered to either sell us a Pentium 2 300MHz for 50 quid (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) or get us a new power supply and fix John's blown up PC, also for 50 quid (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

This conversation left me ranting for the rest of the day. I couldn't believe what a complete rip off this guy was trying to pull on us. I remember about 3 years ago, me and Dad threw away a similar spec'ed machine, a Pentium 2, because we thought it was worthless... but now, 3 years later, I'm being sold the same thing back for 50 quid? This guy had to be off his rocker. It was like someone stealing my poo 3 years ago and then trying to sell it back to me now for 50 quid. I was that insulted. I should have known when we approached his stall, and the PC just had "Broadband ready PC, 3 month warranty, £49" stuck on it, no specifications, that it was a con. I can't believe this guy gets away with it. I suppose he lures newbs into buying it with the 3 month warranty, but I'm pretty sure even the worst, oldest PC would last about 3 months. And that warranty doesn't mean it won't go wrong, it just means if it does, he'll gladly give you another one just as crappy as a replacement. I bet he will, hes probably got a skip full of them he got 4 years ago when some company was replacing its PCs and just threw them away. He claimed this PC was perfect for work and browsing the web, but Id love to see it in action, with its 300MHz, 128MB of RAM and 6GB Hard disk. I bet it runs Windows 98 perfectly... it must be at least 10 years old. And fifty quid to change an old power supply? I fixed the power supply on dad's PC about six months ago, the power supply cost me £3.99 and it took me about 30 mins to plug it in, and that is all.

Made me think, back in Winchester, Fred's old PC is still sat in our hallway, and its about twice as powerful as that one he was selling for 50 quid... all i can say is, I'm not throwing out another old PC, I'm going to stick an advert somewhere up at uni and offer it for 50 quid. Do that four times, and you can build a rubbish new PC, or buy yet another new graphics card for my gaming rig. Morally, I'm not sure if this is right, but so long as I'm up front about the specs and the condition of the machine, and don't offer any warranty, I think there is nothing wrong with that. And it seems people are clearly prepared to pay that price, so I'm not ripping them off if that's how much they want to give people for it. Ill just have to try and keep a straight face while I'm doing it, and forget to mention they could build a nice new one for four times the price, but that would last four times as long. I'm considering a career change...