Used Computer: What would be a reasonable price?
 

What's a reasonable price? I'm fixin' to get a new computer. This seems cheaper than building an equivellent. The seller just tossed out $400 as a suggestion, therefore haggling will ensue. Additionally, I can verify functionality and inclusion of documentation/disks/etc. in person.

Edit: The most demanding business that'll be conducted on this thing will be World of Warcraft or watching movies while browsing the net.

$400 seems fair, but i'd try for $350 and a coke. is the copy of XP legit, and does the box have the cd key posted on it?

It'd be interesting to know the usage pattern of those hard drives. Was the machine kept running 24/7, or was it shut down at night or when not in use? Was it largely idle when not in use, or was he constantly seeding torrents on the machine or something equally disk-intensive? Every hard drive fails, given time and usage.

Still, you won't find a new machine with that spec for $400. Seems like a decent price to me.

If I were you, I'd hop on ebay and see what other systems are running for. That can be a fairly decent gage. Or else, talk to a few friends and see what they would be willing to shell out

(thats what he is doing here)

SMART provides several old-age attributes. Look for:

Power on hours, power cycle count, and error values.

Be careful. SMART is a spec; drives are implementations. Sometimes values are stored as minutes instead of hours while others have wraparound bugs/features. Moral: get the model and google a reality check on the values.

Anyway, $400 seems fair if he's really giving up the windows product key.

[quote=SMART provides sevral old-ade attributes.[/quote]
Can and will do. I lucked out in that the seller is drivably close. This'll definitely be part of my quick once over.

Sure is.

Also, a 20" Dell 2001fps for a suggested $200 has entered the picture. That a good price?

I agree with Kaliena. Ebay will usually tell you what an item is actually worth.

That seems to be a decent price but I'd be wary...

I know everyone hates Dell and OEM builders (and rightly so in some regards) but it's hard to beat having a total warranty for a year or more. Who says this guy didn't run the machine on heavy duty overclocking for however long and the parts aren't all about to fail? There's really not much way to tell. Plus, if that technology was new when he put it together then it's got a few years under its belt by now.

Personally I'd go to newegg and check out how much it would cost to buy those pieces yourself and put it together, and keep that in mind as far as potential replacement cost.

i would say tell him 500 for both the computer and moniter and if he goes for it take it and be happy. but 400 is a fair price for that.

If you went cheapo for a similar system,

X800 XT = 180
P4 2.8 GHz 800 MHz FSB = $70
Cheap LGA775 Board = $75
1 GB DDR400 = $90
500W PSU = $40
WD 250 GB SATA drive = $78
Case = $40

It's like $570 brand new. At $400 you're looking at a 15% reduction from "new" for what I'm estimating to be about a year old.

Its up to you to decide if one year of wear is worth 15%..

(I meant close friends he sees IRL--someone he could actually walk the computer over to and drop it at their house)