Psychostorm Posted October 16, 2008 Report Posted October 16, 2008 I need to sell my gaming computer to get money for more EMT classes and I was wondering if anyone had a good idea of what its worth. It has Dual AMD Opteron 246 Processor 2.01 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, a Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT graphics card, 2 LITE-ON DVDRW SOHW-16935 drives, one floppy disk drive, Standard Duel Channel PCI IDE Controller, Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller, 1394 Net Adapter, Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC RAID Controller Legacy Audio Drivers Legacy Video Capture Devices MPU-401 compatible MIDI Device Realtek AC-97 Audio 6 USB ports 2 headphone ports 2 microphone ports several other sound ports Quote
greenwizard Posted October 23, 2008 Report Posted October 23, 2008 Honestly, probably not more than $250. In my experience of selling computers people don't want to pay much for a used computer, and something is only worth what people will pay for it. Quote
Psychostorm Posted October 27, 2008 Author Report Posted October 27, 2008 Honestly, probably not more than $250. In my experience of selling computers people don't want to pay much for a used computer, and something is only worth what people will pay for it. You know, thats fucked up, I paid like $2000 for that mother fucker like 3 years ago, its still a decent system by todays standards, it will run Warhammer Online well enough. Quote
greenwizard Posted October 31, 2008 Report Posted October 31, 2008 I know. It just seems that people don't want to pay very much for a used system. We were selling my boyfriend's computer that he bought from Dell (yes I know they suck but they were the only ones that would give us financing) for like $500 and it was less than a year old. We sold it for $125 because that was the only offer we got. That sucked. Quote
Psychostorm Posted November 24, 2008 Author Report Posted November 24, 2008 Well, my back up PC just got a fucking virus that was even bad enough to disable all my virus deletion and malware programs so I guess I have to keep my gaming rig for now. Quote
Guest StSE Posted January 7, 2009 Report Posted January 7, 2009 Nowadays you can get laptops with HD screens and 4GB ram, 160 hard drive and already loaded with MS Vista (hate Vista..oh well) for UNDER $500 brandnew. Can run ANY game. (I was looking at them over christmas for the kids.) My younger stepson is saving up $350 to buy a laptop with 2GB ram, 130 hard drive, Wi-Fi card and loaded w/Vista. Heck, my 'work laptop' Has twice as much memory as my 3-year-old desktop. I've got every Sims 2 game/expansion + Transformers + Halo + speciallized graphic creation software + many other high-powered scientific graphic/creation software on it.... And I've only used 30% of available space... I use it to run everything from ceiling mounted projection units, to testing equipment in the labs ..**gasp**.... And for a few hundred bucks I can 'upgrade' it to a solid-state - and double the memory...... And this was only a thousand dollar laptop. If you backed up your PC, just take it to Geek Squad and have them erase the harddrive and reload your programs/files. If you didn't back up your PC, try restoring it back several months and then re-installing virus software. It's pointless to try to sell a PC and hope for any recovery of your initial investment. Nowadays they are obsolete in as little as 6 months. As for EMT school. Are there no government grants/scholarships/loans that you qualify for? I have one friend who got a job with a city fire department, and they paid for him to get his EMT and then Paramedics training - he just had to sign a long-term employment contract with them. Quote
DemonGoddess Posted January 7, 2009 Report Posted January 7, 2009 Looking at the specs you have up for your gaming system, you'd probably get no more than $200. It's that planned obsolescence thing ya know... regarding your virus problem, how comfortable are you working in the registry? If you're not, your best bet would be to reformat the machine. When you reinstall your browsers, stay far FAR away from browser toolbars. Those things are trojan magnets. Quote
greenwizard Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 You know what I hate? Friends that you let borrow your laptop while theirs is getting fixed who download porn! My boyfriend got a brand new gaming laptop today so he gave me mine back. I was cleaning it up and found porn, some of it illegal stuff. Plus a whole shit load of viruses and spyware. I know... to the casual observer it looks like my boyfriend did it. But I know him well, and he's not into that. He takes my head off for watching it after he hasn't touched me in months. He was only using it for writing because he likes writing on laptops. That's all he could use it for because it's three years old and can't handle his games. But... the friend I lent it to while my boyfriend was fixing hers loves porn. In fact, the laptop my boyfriend was fixing for her was killed by downloading porn and never doing a virus or spyware scan. And she's not known for being respectful of other people's property. While staying with us for a while we found evidence of her doing things we asked her not to after we went to bed, including smoking in the house. Anyway, I was trying to clean this thing up and came to the conclusion that it would be better just to format it. I formatted it and reinstalled Windows. But now it won't start up! It blue screens when I try to start it up. Quote
DemonGoddess Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 You'll have to start over again. Do a complet full format, not a quick format. Then reinstall windows. Quote
DarkInuLord Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 New that computer would be around $500. Selling it used you'd be lucky to get $300. 8500 cards aren't worth much, and your processor isn't an Intel so I'm sure it's no more than $100. Regarding StSE's input about LAPTOPS, also greenwizard... There's no such thing as a "Gaming laptop", I can not stress this enough. People who sell laptops as "Gaming laptops" are trying to get more money out of you, and they should be shot. :| Also, Vista isn't for gaming, I don't care what Microsoft tries to say. Even the most computer savvy people can't get Vista to run older games, or even some more recent ones, and "gamers" don't play just new games. Ahem. If you want to talk about cheap gaming computers you can build one yourself with just a little bit of knowledge for $300+ cheaper than you would get the same thing prebuilt. 4GB DDR3 RAM Nvidia 9800 Quad core AMD processor 1TB HDD Etc, etc, and it comes up to $950 before discounts on Newegg. You just have to know what to look for. (Well, that's including a $150 case... Sexy case...) Anyways, 6AM, sleep time. Quote
Guest StSE Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 Regarding StSE's input about LAPTOPS, also greenwizard...There's no such thing as a "Gaming laptop", I can not stress this enough. People who sell laptops as "Gaming laptops" are trying to get more money out of you, and they should be shot. :| Also, Vista isn't for gaming, I don't care what Microsoft tries to say. Even the most computer savvy people can't get Vista to run older games, or even some more recent ones, and "gamers" don't play just new games. He, he... Yes, I've heard that before. I've also had a 'true gamer' tell me that Halo wasn't available for PC... Fascinating... (and yes, we also have a Wii for the kids. but I'm not buying Xbox and crap - simply to play a game!) Actually, I custom ordered my Dell with XP - since I hate Vista. Just like my home system has. (And I ordered it to use it primarily for WORK - but since it's mine I can game on it as well!) Most of the graphics programs I use for work - can't go on Vista. Like I told a BUNCH of parents that were in line at Sams club buying this-or-that gaming system: I can go buy a different controller, plug it in, and enjoy the popular games on my 17" laptop screen (and/or the big projector at work - when I'm on lunch. Can't beat playing a video game with a 6'X6' screen **snicker**) It NEVER locks up! And once I get one of those new solid state drives I've heard about - just IMAGINE the GB it'll have. Since I also use it to edit my movies that I create with my HD video camera - I can't WAIT!!! And the nice thing about a 'gaming laptop' - Is that I can throw the controller in my briefcase with it. When I'm bored or have a lunch break at work - I slide the DVD in, hook the controller/headphones - and have fun! Can't do THAT with a desktop system.... Sometimes I'll play Sims with a coworker on lunch as well. The laptop is a MUCH better system than the same price desktop Dell that I'm typing on right now! I can't wait to upgrade to the Notebook that can read both Blue ray and DVD, with the solid state chip... Another year and it'll be in my budget range... Quote
DemonGoddess Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 Our big test at home to test the stability of an operating system is to see how long it takes me to crash it. It took me 2 minutes to crash Vista. That's it. I wasn't even DOING much. Just my normal stuff without getting into any extensive stuff (multiple tabs in the browser, several programs open and working). In Vista, I can have a whole TWO programs open besides my damn browser, before it starts getting wiggy. On my XP machine, I'll sometimes have 3 to 4 graphics programs open, be chatting in a few different windows, maybe have a spreadsheet, or document, or both open, as well as my ftp program and some database stuff (virtual servers and whatnot). With NO problems. EVER. I don't dare do that with Vista. Quote
DarkInuLord Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 This here computer of mine's going on 6 years now. And I haven't crashed it in so long. It does freeze if I plug anything into the two front USB ports though. The back ones are fine, even though only two work now. Quote
Guest StSE Posted January 8, 2009 Report Posted January 8, 2009 Our big test at home to test the stability of an operating system is to see how long it takes me to crash it. It took me 2 minutes to crash Vista. **snicker** Sounds like my house... I actually decided one day (after a guy at geek squad said I needed more RAM on my new laptop) to see just how many things I could have on at once before it crashed. Ok, here we go: Crack knuckles.... Sims 2 - Bon Voyage Windows Media Player Photo Explosion Cmap Tools Internet Explorer Windows Movie Maker SkyGazer (Astronomy program, lots of graphics) MDL ISIS draw (Chemistry graphics program) Finally locked up when I opened Adobe Photoshop.. along with all the others.. Gotta love Intel Core2Duo!!! And MS XP office professional. I actually ACCIDENTALLY purchased a Vista when I first went looking for my laptop. Raised hell over at Best Buy within 4 hours since it would run NOTHING! And I couldn't erase the operating system and load XP... (changed the type of drivers. You can go XP to Vista - but not backwards)... Needless to say, manager gave me a refund and I called Dell directly that very day!! Gotta love the Vostro series.. Quote
DemonGoddess Posted January 9, 2009 Report Posted January 9, 2009 When I crashed the Vista machine (a dualcore), I had 5 tabs open in firefox, and 5 in IE, 2 documents, 1 spreadsheet, a Corel drawing open and 5 chat windows (3 different messengers). I went to open up a pdf....and it LOCKED UP. That's not much, really. My desktop, for example (2.8ghz Celeron, plenty of RAM), at any given time, I'll have Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop open, browser tabs open, several chat windows, a document or three of any given kind, a text editor open for script editing, generally a db program and a 3d graphics progam as well..sometimes one of my puzzle games when I run into something I need to step AWAY from. No problems, no crashes. XP Pro is the OS. The funny thing here is, with XP on the other machine, I'm sure I could easily do what I do on my desktop. But never, ever with Vista. The sad part of all this is the laptop outpowers my desktop in hardware. I SHOULD ideally be able to USE that to my advantage. But can't because of the OS. The only benefit, to me, of having Vista installed is for testing purposes for programming (has a few machines set up with different OS and OS versions for that very reason). Totally agree with DarkInuLord by the way...I've yet to run in to a laptop that can be made a gaming machine the way a desktop can. You want a gaming system, you go with a good solid desktop, preferably by a company like Alienware, if you gotta buy a pre built. Or if you know how to build one, the best possible components, of course. . The laptop is the first machine we've had in YEARS that we haven't built ourselves. Quote
Guest StSE Posted January 9, 2009 Report Posted January 9, 2009 I kept the XP office disc. The problem that I found when I went shopping was that IF the system was built for Vista - it has a different driver and therefor CANNOT run XP. Which sucks. Just means I'll upgrade instead of buy again for as long as I can. But I tell you what, this desktop (Dell) cost me the same as the laptop (Dell) ... And SUCKS!!! I need to buy a seperate DVD reader for it if I want to load any of my games. I've glanced at the desktop components on the shelves when I was comparing new laptops over christmas - and it's still half the price to buy a laptop with the same amount (or better) of hardware.... Go figure? We are actually planning to replace this desktop - with my current laptop - when it goes bonk. Sad to say, I'm just so much MORE impressed with everything about the laptops than what is available with the desktops. And I can just set it down, hook up a few cables - and run every piece of sound system, monitor (husband has a 40" monitor to look at plans - KILLER!), printers and controls. With plenty of memory to spare. And if need be - it's portable as well. The only other system which has impressed me further - is a notebook Mac that a Physics guru I know has. Talk about POWER!!! WOW!!! Granted, I'd have to take a night course in how to actually use it. (never used a Mac outside of the Physics labs back in college)... But it's truly a 'serious' system! Quote
greenwizard Posted January 23, 2009 Report Posted January 23, 2009 You can still get XP from Dell? That's news to me. My boyfriend got his laptop from Toshiba and he was able to order XP with it because we too hate Vista. When the idiot that killed my Dell laptop was staying with us she got a desktop with Vista. We have wireless internet with a secured network and it took us three days to figure out how to get her computer online. Quote
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