The Joy of Buying Used and Refurbished
Working in IT has been great for interacting with and/or learning new technologies. It also generally means I follow or watch influencers on YouTube that review the newest computers, game consoles, linux distros, or cool DIY-ish widget that solves some niche issue. And in doing that, and having been in a tech or tech-related field for so long, you lose sight of the “good enough” in tech and always want the next best thing. You want the newest GPU, or the next cool mechanical keyboard, or the latest handheld-emulator. And at some point you have lost site of what technology is supposed to be.
The Function of Technology
Part of my recent foray into my De-converging Technology - Introduction has really helped me reevaluate what technology is supposed to be and how I have previously interacted with it, and continue to interact with it. Technology, at it’s basic components, is a tool that is supposed to enrich our lives. Each piece of technology that I use needs to be intentional and useful again, much like a drill or hammer. De-converging my smartphone and using purpose-built tools for some of those functions has really solidified that idea in my life. The problem is that, like anything, technology has become not only a commodity, but a status symbol, too. Technology in the modern USA has become an end unto itself, instead of the means to an end.
Technology as an end unto itself
What I mean by this is that it is more desireable to have the latest and highest end smartphone, or the best GPU in your gaming computer, or the next best smart-widget. I am absolutely guilty of this and have been for years. At one point we had every current gen game console in the house. Everyone had decent gaming laptops. Tablets for everyone. Smartphones for everyone but my son. Nice bluetooth headphones every year for the adults. Before having a family, having the latest GPU, best CPU, nice gaming case, etc. New TVs. It was a lot.
And as I’ve aged and started some deep introspection, I’m discovering finding joy in “good enough”. Technology is moving from the end unto itself into more of a means to an end again. It’s a tool. I paid off my current smartphone and have no desire to get a new one. It makes phone calls, sends texts, Google Maps works great, and Google Calendar syncs to it. Almost everything else is superfluous. It’s also an Android device that gets 7 years of updates, so in theory I should just need to replace the battery in about a year and it should be good for a while longer. I’ve gotten into 3D printing over the last few years, and after buying some cheaper printers that kind of sucked, I landed on some really good mid-range printers. It was an expensive mistake to make, and I wish I would have taken some advice I’m about to give now.
Buy Secondhand
You should buy secondhand when you can. Sometimes buying new makes sense. Buy something new if it’s a tool that you won’t be able to fix if it dies within the first year, or if it would be too dangerous to get fixed if not from an authorized person/facility. But buying refurbished tends to solve this problem while you save something from the trash potentially, and save some money. For the 3D printers, I should have bought something cheap from Craig’s List or FaceBook Market instead of from the manufacturer’s directly. The upside, however, was that I was able to gift the printers to friends that were pretty bad, and they have been able to get them to be “good enough” for their needs.
Another example is of course the iPod I got off of eBay. You can’t buy iPod classics new, of course, but with a little know-how and patience I’ve been able to get a few 4th-gen classics and replace their batteries and aging hard drives with flash storage, and now my wife and my son and I all have dedicated music players. My daughter still uses streaming on her phone, and that’s perfectly fine if that’s what she wants to do.
The inspiration, though, for this post was when I purchased some used Mac computers from OWC. I needed a cheap desktop computer that could do some basic virtualization, run some older programs, and of course get on the interwebs. They had a special on Mac Pro 2013’s for super cheap, and it’s a small enough device that didn’t take up a lot of my limited desk space. Yes, the Trash Mac Pro is no longer supported, but it runs up to MacOS 12 officially, and with Open Core Legacy Patcher you can run up to MacOS 15 unofficially, although there are some challenges. I also needed a laptop and got an old MacBook Air for lightweight stuff. I spent under $300 for both and have everything I need. MacOS, as much as I hated it before, is pretty great once you get used to it. It’s close to GNU/Linux, but with some more creature comforts, and miles ahead of Microsofts AI and Ad-ridden garbage-ware they call an OS now.
One of the accidental joys of buying used has also been using technology that was outside of my price bracket years ago, or that was outside my interests. As I said, I really didn’t like MacOS a decade ago, but using older versions of MacOS and even up to MacOS 12, I have a lot of appreciation now for what these machines can do as a whole package. These little machines are also great little workhorses, and for the moment work with all sorts of software still. I realize that these Intel-based Macs are going to be going the way of the PowerPC Macs of years ago and there will be less and less software available. However there will be a time where I just switch these over to some flavor of GNU/Linux and they’ll get another lease on life…again.
Another example is I bought a new-in-box 3D printer that was 3 years old from ebay (It’s used adjacent) and it’s my “project printer” where I’m learning more about 3D printing and Klipper. Our current printers need to be functional as they are tools for our side-hustle now. 3 Years ago I wasn’t interested in 3D printers and 3D modeling and wouldn’t have looked twice at this, but the cost was so low that the risks of failure are non-catastrophic. I’ve already ruined one hotend with garbage filament, and learned how to wire up and replace it with an e3d v6 Volcano hotend.
Conclusion
Sometimes buying used or old can backfire, of course, and you end up needing to drop loads of money into an item that you don’t have the funds to do, or the time to fix on your own and you need this tool to be functional. But that comes back to being intentional with your tools. Understand what needs to be new, what can be refurbished, and what can be totally used.
In buying these items secondhand I’m not only saving lots of money and getting a tool that will accomplish my goals, but I’m also breaking the habit of needing the latest and greatest for status. Having a decade-old MacBook Air does not scream “status”, at least not by the normal measure when it comes to technology. And by using these tools everyday, and then comparing the cost of a newer device that would be “better” I can say, would a new Mac Studio really be $2000 better for what I use the TrashMac for? Would a new MacBook Air really improve my life and personal workflow that much more?
Now if you use your tools to make money, the math changes. Maybe the speed of a Mac Studio really does mean that it saves you time and or does something that your business needs but the old device just can’t. For personal use, though, I’ve had to really work at asking those questions, and even then I still find myself eyeing a new Mac Studio, or a higher-end 3D printer, or a nice split ortho keyboard. And each time it takes that intentionality to say “Is this tool really going to perform better than the one I already have?” You wouldn’t get a new power drill just because it has RGB and goes 10% faster than your current dril if it cost hundreds of dollars more, would you?