this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
54 points (100.0% liked)

chat

8547 readers
21 users here now

Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.

As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.

Thank you and happy chatting!

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This past year I've been checking local listings for used cheap laptops because it'd be neat to have a small portable Linux machine.

It's just surprisingly difficult to confirm what specs a given model has or to find reviews for it. The sellers don't always do the best job listing the components and googling the model numbers may not give you too many results either. Some manufacturers keep reusing the same model name year after year so you have similarly named computers with wildly different guts, or often a specific model number will only give you very local and very limited results which makes me think some SKUs are only sold in a few countries for a short period of time

Buying phones is much more simple in this regard

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] tamagotchicowboy@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Its a holdover from their desktop pc origins, its a way to grift/ripoff and the last a lot of times the sellers themselves don't know what's up they just know sell laptop get $. Reverse image can help somewhat,

I focus on cpu, ram and if its upgradable, storage and then reviews on those when I look. People are offloading after their semester/for holiday money so now isn't a bad time to hit up ebay/FB Marketplace if you want second hand. Lenovos tend to be very customizable, easy to repair and built like tanks.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Reverse image can help somewhat

Not really, these aren't product photos but ones snapped by the seller themselves

[–] tamagotchicowboy@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

Can help narrow the model down sometimes, have to do this at work when people return items without tags, sometimes Google/Yandex recognizes what it is, sometimes not.