Second-hand? Several days-hand, more like

Monday, January 26th, 2009

Well, it’s done: over the weekend I bit the bullet and ordered my second-hand PC for the £250 Challenge. It’s a decent-looking machine, with a Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and a 19in TFT, which should make it a very viable desktop PC. Hopefully our dear editor Tim Danton will agree when he comes to judge our entries.

But getting to this stage has been a monumental hassle – far more so than I’d anticipated. When I volunteered for the £250 Challenge I thought buying second-hand would be easy: just scout around the various classified and auction sites, visit the local second-hand shops, draw up a shortlist, fire off a few emails, bish bash bosh, job done. (more…)

caveat manūs secundae emptor

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

So, as you’ll have seen, the PC Pro £250 Challenge is afoot. Over the next week or two my colleagues and I will be doing our best to find (or assemble) a killer PC for no more than half a monkey. And my personal quest is to obtain a dream machine on the second-hand market.

The precise source is up to me: I can scour classified ads, place bids on auction sites or even try to persuade David Fearon to sell me one of his cast-offs. But the PC I buy has to be pre-loved, and it has to come in at £250 or less.

I admit, it’s not an approach I’ve tried before. Being by nature an impatient sod, my usual purchasing strategy is simply to march into a shop and slap down a credit card. This will, I suspect, be a learning experience for me.

But that doesn’t mean I have to go into it completely blind. So, dear readers: what should I be looking out for? Share the benefits of your experience, and tell me your tips and warnings.

Otherwise, on my first foray into the second-hand arena, I’ve every chance of getting screwed around and ripped off. And you wouldn’t want to see that, would you?