Need a 2nd opinion - refurbished machine

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Haole Boy

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Aloha everyone. I've got a customer in need of a new machine. Basic requirement is Win 10, 1 TB drive, ~ 3 GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM. And, as always, cost is a major factor, so I decided to look at a refurbished machine. Found this one on Amazon. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. The only negative I can see is no VGA port, but that's easily handled with a HDMI to VGA adapter. Also, probably cannot be upgraded to Win 11 (using current restrictions), but that's not important. The seller is US Tecno, any feedback on them?

Mahalo for your assistance!

Harry Z
 
Haole Boy said:
Aloha everyone. I've got a customer in need of a new machine. Basic requirement is Win 10, 1 TB drive, ~ 3 GHz CPU, 8 GB RAM. And, as always, cost is a major factor, so I decided to look at a refurbished machine. Found this one on Amazon. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. The only negative I can see is no VGA port, but that's easily handled with a HDMI to VGA adapter. Also, probably cannot be upgraded to Win 11 (using current restrictions), but that's not important. The seller is US Tecno, any feedback on them?

Mahalo for your assistance!

Harry Z
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That's pretty expensive for a 3rd generation i5, the 1TB SSD softens the blow a little bit. Those OptiPlex machines are pretty solid though IMHO. I'd look for a newer generation for sale, $250 range.
 
Porthos said:
Look closer
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Oops! Missed that one. Always a pleasure to make a glaring error in public! :)

Porthos said:
Add your own 1 tb into this one.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that one looks good... need to do more looking (I prefer Dell over Lenovo, but this isn't bad). Any comments on the supplier of this machine? They have a 93% positive rating...

timeshifter said:
That's pretty expensive for a 3rd generation i5, the 1TB SSD softens the blow a little bit. Those OptiPlex machines are pretty solid though IMHO. I'd look for a newer generation for sale, $250 range.
Click to expand...

OK. I'm really hardware ignorant. Will have to educate myself on what is a 3rd generation vs. 4th. Thanx for the feedback

Diggs said:
Used machines on Amazon tend to be that way. A quick search for Dell Optiplex on Ebay gives quite a selection at lower prices.
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OK, I'll take a look, but I'm always nervous with purchasing from eBay about the quality and responsiveness of the sellers.

Mahalo for all the feedback,

Much appreciated!

Harry Z
 
Haole Boy said:
Will have to educate myself on what is a 3rd generation vs. 4th.
Click to expand...
6067hi.jpg


Haole Boy said:
Any comments on the supplier of this machine? They have a 93% positive rating...
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Personally, I rarely look at the seller. Never received a bad one from many sellers.
 
Porthos said:
Add your own 1 tb
Click to expand...
This is the way to go. You don't need to buy a refurb fully specced for reselling to customers. It's often better value getting a standard config (e.g. 500GB HDD) and installing a new SSD which we can source quite cheaply. I often buy units with 4GB/HDD and upgrade them with spare RAM and sometimes just add a spare 120GB SSD and keep the HDD in there for more storage. Usually add new 250GB/500GB SSDs though.
 
Haole Boy said:
Will have to educate myself on what is a 3rd generation vs. 4th.
Click to expand...

Well, in the most basic sense, look at what follows the dash in the Intel processor designation. If it's 1000-1999 it's 1st gen, 5000-5999 it's 5th gen, 10000-10999 it's 10th gen. I'm sure you see the pattern.

As to what the differences are in what the various generations can do, that's an entirely different can of worms. Since I have zero control over the processor that's in virtually any machine I touch, my only interest comes when things like Windows 11 come out where there is a clear line of demarcation about what generation of Intel processor is the first that qualifies for that upgrade (which is 8th generation) if the other hardware requirements are present as well.
 
Haole Boy said:
OK, I'll take a look, but I'm always nervous with purchasing from eBay about the quality and responsiveness of the sellers.
Click to expand...
The buyer has the power on Ebay so I don't really worry about the financial end of it. I do check how many sales the seller has made and what their rating is. If they only have a handful of sales with a less than stellar rating I tend to stay away. I look for tech sellers that have made many sales and maintain a high rating with good recommendations and comments.
 
Diggs said:
I look for tech sellers that have made many sales and maintain a high rating with good recommendations and comments.
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Same here. And even if not all of the comments are positive, look at the quality of the negative comments.

If someone's got above 90% positive rating and thousands of sales, the dissatisfied are a small minority. And, often, if you look at the comments (if they left any) of that small minority you find that they just had, and have, no earthly clue about what they were buying or how it was to be used.
 
I do NOT recommend the Optiplex 7010, the USB 3.0 controller drivers are wonky in Windows 10.

Get a system with an 8th gen or younger CPU in it and be ready for Windows 11, or at least get a 4th gen CPU carrying system. It'll spare your balding.
 
britechguy said:
As to what the differences are in what the various generations can do, that's an entirely different can of worms. Since I have zero control over the processor that's in virtually any machine I touch, my only interest comes when things like Windows 11 come out where there is a clear line of demarcation about what generation of Intel processor is the first that qualifies for that upgrade (which is 8th generation) if the other hardware requirements are present as well.
Click to expand...

Exactly my feelings on this. Since I'm not going for something that can / will be upgraded to Win 11, I'm not sure why I would want a 4th gen vs. 3rd, vs. whatever. They all run Win 10, and a system with an SSD will be so much faster than the current (old) HDD, that I don't think an improvement in CPU capability will be perceptible to the customer.

Thanks for all the responses!
 
4th gen has much better USB 3.0 support than 3rd. 4th is my sweet spot, up until Win11 requirements landed because 5th onward incorporates the Intel Management Engine into the EFI and now you need quarterly or better BIOS updates to patch security problems in the CPU microcode itself.

5th - 7th are basically the same things, and incremental improvements come up but no real game changers as far as I know. Some of the late 7th gen chips are basically 8th gen chips, and are Win11 ready.

8th gen now... that's not a line in the sand for no reason. It's where Intel finally got the flexible microcode right, where you can get your firmware updates to mitigate spectre / meltdown type threats. It's also where Intel decided that power and thermal efficiency was more important than speed gains. So these systems use vastly less power compared to their predecessors. It's a big deal in got climates like mine because it makes a real dent in the powerbill. It also comes with additional support for security specifically with virtual workloads.

Everything younger is just more efficient again, I'm again unaware of major changes as we seem to be back into incremental improvements.
 
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