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I got up a little early so that I could visit what is quickly becoming my favorite computer shop, Microseconds. This is a small shop in Salem, NH, full of used stuff. It's on route 28, across from the Best Buy and CompUSA and up the street from some other locals shops (most of which charge too much or otherwise suck). Unlike the shop I visit in Wilmington, which has no room for one to walk and an owner that smokes like a chimney, this place has a tidy selection of good stuff.
I mention this place because I found that they had about twenty Dell Optiplex GX150 boxes for $150 each. These are Pentium 3 866 MHz boxes with 256 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drives. Some insurance company dumped these. They're all in perfect working order, they have built-in network cards and video, and they're each desktop-sized (say, 14" x 14" x 5") and can be stood on their ends. These machines pass the Strongbad test easily. This is a deal that rivals going to the swap meet. They even have DVD players. Long story short: you can hide this behind the TV or the bookshelf and turn it into a media server once you add a bigger hard drive.
I just found out that my cable modem is old. How? I only got it two years ago, fresh out of the box. It turns out the Sharkfin (3Com HomeConnect) is DOCSIS 1.0 compliant, but Comcast is up to 2.0. This explains some slowdowns I've had. Like an customer, I can go to any walk-up counter (say, the one where I work) and swap my leased modem for a brand new Motorola SuffBoard 5120 (which is about the size of a 1970s paperback). Seeing as my first modem was about the size (and build) of a car stereo amplifier and it put out enough heat to cook an egg, I'm amazed at the change in just five years.
-free toy, unlike all the others, Dante
I mention this place because I found that they had about twenty Dell Optiplex GX150 boxes for $150 each. These are Pentium 3 866 MHz boxes with 256 MB RAM and 20 GB hard drives. Some insurance company dumped these. They're all in perfect working order, they have built-in network cards and video, and they're each desktop-sized (say, 14" x 14" x 5") and can be stood on their ends. These machines pass the Strongbad test easily. This is a deal that rivals going to the swap meet. They even have DVD players. Long story short: you can hide this behind the TV or the bookshelf and turn it into a media server once you add a bigger hard drive.
I just found out that my cable modem is old. How? I only got it two years ago, fresh out of the box. It turns out the Sharkfin (3Com HomeConnect) is DOCSIS 1.0 compliant, but Comcast is up to 2.0. This explains some slowdowns I've had. Like an customer, I can go to any walk-up counter (say, the one where I work) and swap my leased modem for a brand new Motorola SuffBoard 5120 (which is about the size of a 1970s paperback). Seeing as my first modem was about the size (and build) of a car stereo amplifier and it put out enough heat to cook an egg, I'm amazed at the change in just five years.
-free toy, unlike all the others, Dante
