Bought a second hand laptop

[turtlebay777]

I went to a Ham Radio and computer show yesterday and amongst the bargains was an older (2007 if the BIOS date is right) ex Vista 64 bit dual core HP laptop which a dealer had converted to run Win 10 and sold to me for £15. I was surprised that Win 10 looked reasonable but then realised that the installed system was taking up most of the hard drive space (110GB hdd) and was only fast opening because it had the semi hibernate thingy enabled.
When I turned that off and rebooted it took ages and ages to boot up. I thought, immediate candidate for MX.
Installed MX and the PC is now super fast even with it's meager 2GB ram.

Bought many other bargains, some used and some new, including a used 2 stroke 800 watt generator. That trader had had trouble starting it but I soon discovered it was because he was switching it off via the on/off switch rather than following the proper method with 2 strokes, turning off the petrol and letting it starve for fuel. Doing that prevents the gum in the oil/petrol mix from collecting in the carb and making it difficult to start!

Also bought 2 250GB SATA hdds for my tower which were just £5 each.

I do love these shows!

[rokytnji.1]

Cool Beans. When city hall upgrades their gear. I get lucky and collect some of the left overs.

[turtlebay777]

A guy gave me a broken laptop last year and I realised the 4 GBs of ram in it would fit the one I just bought so swapped it over. Now that's a whole lot better!

[JayM]

I loved going to yard and garage sales, swap meets (especially ham radio ones), flea markets and things like that. Once, a local Seattle-area antique radio club held a swap meet. Most of the items that I was interested in (shortwave receivers) were out of my price range as the club members knew their resale value but I scored a perfectly-working little 1960's era handheld AM transistor radio in almost-new condition for around $5. I think the label on it even stated the number of transistors it had. I had no practical need for it but I thought it was neat so I bought it. I wish I still had it, but I must have lost it when moving.

I got a lot of bargains at people's private sales too: a nice Seth-Thomas brand quartz wall clock that I put in my dining area just off of the kitchen, a small microwave oven that someone had used on his boat, a great barometer with a wood base in perfect condition, a portable-luggable AM-FM radio with a little 5 or 6 inch pop-up B&W TV. Lots of neat junk. I even got some older guy's collection of assorted old screws, nuts, bolts and washers, which are things you need when you buy your first house and want to do your own maintenance and repairs. We don't get those kinds of sales here in the Philippines. I miss them.