Please boost for broader range of replies.
You know a guy. He likes tech but has notoriously bad luck with it working for him.
His aging Windows OS on his aging laptop won't be officially supported after the new year.
Citing other suggestions by replying, do you recommend he:
@reay What's the risk in buying second-hand hardware? As long as there is someone to help test it, so all the ports work, screen is okay, etc, I think it's preferrable. At least it worked for the one who owned it before.
New laptop might just die in a month even if it's HP or Apple. The chance is far from zero. Yes, you can replace it, but you have to move data to and fro and that is always a nightmare. And you can't really open it up so they don't ask questions if you go for replacement 🤷🏿♀️
@reay You're right! It might be pure luck for me. I've bought all kinds of used equipment: laptop, gfx card, soundcard, RAM, camera, bass, synthesizers, acoustic system… I can't even remember everything! And for me it was almost always not only a great deal, but some interesting interaction. For example, the person whom I've bought speakers from did a real demo of them for me — it wasn't necessary, I've owned the same model before, but he really enjoyed that 😆
@reay I'm more of a CD guy myself and he was more into compact cassettes so he showed me what tape decks he has, it was interesting. I had a great time.
On the other hand a friend of mine bought a fried GPU once, it kind of worked, but under extensive workloads it just shut off. Bad things happen even if you follow all the rules, but I was lucky!
@m0xee I have a long, sad history of tech just not working for me the way it should or dying quickly. One phone had just the GPS stop working properly. Another had the battery spontaneously zero out (part of a chipset where that was a known issue, later research informed me). Laptops have fundamental issues just after the warranty is up, or fry upon first plugging it in fresh out of the box, in one case.
@m0xee It started off with friends kind of treating it like a funny thing and it’s now well established as a genuine problem that they just shake their heads at. I have plenty of tech-savvy friends who have never seen stuff that I’ve encountered with tech across the board. Tech support often has to escalate issues I call about because they just don’t know what the hell is going on.
So yeah, I’m pretty leery of getting second-hand tech of any sort because problems that can happen probably will. 🤷♂️
@m0xee I've had bad luck buying used tech before. As you say, new ones can have fundamental flaws as well (my daughter had that happen with a brand new HP laptop, and the problem couldn't/wouldn't be fixed by them), but I'm leery of buying anything used, particularly from people I don't know.