Used laptop stampede

[Scott Stevens]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:57:27 -0400
"Teo Zenios" <teoz at neo.rr.com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tim Shoppa" <shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com>
> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 7:49 PM
> Subject: Re: Used laptop stampede
> 
> 
> > > You have to ask why the school was ditching machines in working
> > > condition (wasted taxpayer money)
> >
> > I know of one large government organization in Washington DC that
> > uses its PC's as nothing but 3270 emulators... and upgrades them
> > every 1.5 to 2 years along with it's IT department recomendation.
> >
> > Tim.
> 
> Since when does government (you know the entity that can actually just
> tax people more or print more money as needed) care about wasting
> money. A schoolsystem gets allot of their operating budget from local
> taxes, so I would think they might want to be smarter about showing
> how wasteful they are with the locals money (since they are close
> enough to get lynched by those taxpayers).
> 
> 
You'd be amazed at how wasteful school districts are with computer
hardware money.  I'm constantly amazed, at the auctions I attend.  Most
recently, it was a college auction, not a grade/high-school auction, but
I found myself able to buy as many as several dozen Dell Pentium III
machines for $5 each (I only bought six).  Most sensible people will
recognize that such hardware is still VERY usable.  (I'll bring this
comment back to semi-ontopic by mentioning that I was the person at that
auction who got heckled when I tried to explain some of my bids by I was
buying 'vintage' hardware.)

Granted, I personally benefit greatly from the rapid-obsolescence-track
they put all those systems on, as I no longer buy ANY computers new at
retail.