I've been prowling eBay lately. Lots of good deals can be had these days, especially in used computer equipment. As the dot coms die, their assets may be sold by their secured creditors (banks, leasing companies and sometimes investors). That means . . .
I've been prowling eBay lately. Lots of good deals can be had these days, especially in used computer equipment. As the dot coms die, their assets may be sold by their secured creditors (banks, leasing companies and sometimes investors). That means lots of slightly used computers end up on their hands, but they are not in the hardware business. So they use liquidators to sell the machines quickly to recoup some of their investment dollars.

These machines were used previously as everything from web servers to mail servers, intranet servers to desktops. On any given day, hundreds of computers and used hard disks are on sale on eBay from these liquidation firms. I recently bought two computers this way, and the savings was immense; I paid about 25% of the price I would have paid if I bought them new.

The first thing I did when I received the computers was turn them on; this is the simplest way to make sure nothing was damaged during shipment. What surprised me was that not only did the machines power up, but each soon presented me with an interesting sight: a Windows login prompt. This was surprising because I didn't pay for the operating system that the computer came with, nor did I receive a licensed copy of Windows with the computer. Obviously, something was afoot, and I had a sneaking suspicion more was on my new computers than just the operating system.

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