And from the glowing reviews it’s clear that
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W11 doesn’t actually need a new PC to run and the limitations are completely artificial
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For many people, a ten years old PC is fast enough (or even faster than a brand new Intel N100 PC that is officially W11 compatible). They won’t even notice that’s something from 2015, as long it has a shiny new case, enough RAM and SSD
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Amazon doesn’t care that the PC comes with pirated software, or that someone is scamming their customers, as long they get their 15% cut from marketplace sales (the cost of a genuine license of W11 pro and office exceeds the price of those ewaste specials)
I thought all Lemmy users were running Linux?
Folks, the sooner you dip your toe into Linux the better. Don’t let these mega corps tell you how to use your own stuff. Buck the trends and break free.
Those are newer than the CPU I’m typing this on, they’re not waste
They dont officially support windows 11 and the avg users are not going to know any better. It’s a grey area scam. They’re not worth $400 at all.
But 1000% not waste to a tech person. My oldest machines right now we’re decommissioned workstations with 8th gen i5s that I used for seedbox, DNS/pihole, proxmox, etc. they won’t get windows installed and I’ll drive them til they literally die. Backed up with veaam to a second truenas, easily swapped out and back up and running with any failure. I love older tech because it’s cheap and as long as you know what you’re doing, it works well.
Those aren’t eWaste. Those are Mint machines.
Not worth hundreds though
I keep repeating this, my i5 750 (2009 pc), oc at 3.6ghz can do any fucking thing most people do with their computer. With a 1060 gpu, It plays like 90% of the games , I’ve made pro audio and video projects on it, even a small vr game.
Yeah no, calling cap on that.
It’ll run most indies and triple A game from 6-7y ago.
It’ll be a real bottle neck for recent games. And especially for the only game that truly matters, rimworld.
I am running an n150 on a secondary mini pc. On paper it’s twice as fast as your cpu. It drives me crazy how slow it can be at times when running multiple tabs or apps at the same time. You’re delusional if you think your cpu is still up to snuff in 2025
I think people tend to forget that the vast majority of people don’t even play games on their computer. Like when I mention this computer, I always get “Nah, this wont play Elden Ring at 4k 120 fps, just throw it to the garbage”. But my parents, sisters, most of my friends dont give a damn about gaming. And this computer is definitely fast enough for all my personal gaming needs.
Another thing, is that gaming streaming services are now super efficient. I could literally play Doom the Dark Age at 1080p on Xbox Game pass with this PC, and I sometimes subscribe to PS+ to play Playstation exclusives.
Yeah, same. That was my first major PC build and it hit its threshold. I used the hell out of it for nearly 6 years, but no way it’s playing new games with a 1060.
Has mentioned, I just finished It takes 2 with my nephew. Might subscribe to Gamepass to try Doom The Dark Age. Not everyone needs 4k or competition performance.
Fr. I have an OCd 2500k and it was a bottleneck many years ago. Pre Sandy CPUs… Not a chance it’s not a bottleneck.
Serious question, why haven’t you upgraded to an i7 yet? They’d have to be super cheap at this point, right?
Wasn’t a lot of benefits from the i7 back then, the 750 was still quad core, decent specs.
The I7 has hyper threading which is a ~50% perf boost over the i5
I mean, it’s not my work PC anymore, but this one has been my main entertainment system for years now. I really don’t need to upgrade and create e-waste to gain a little bit of performance. I haven’t even installed Linux on it yet, still on win 10, but that will make it even faster. It’s my firm belief that like 80% of the people would be fine with 15+ years old computers.
My newest computer is 5 years old. I see no reason to upgrade anything.
I use my 11 year old laptop with Linux mint on it as well. I maxed out the RAM on it and swapped in a Sata SSD, it boots in under 40 seconds and does everything I need it to do. It’s one of those cheap underpowered Celeron processors as well.
Id still be using my clamshell iBook if it worked and supported a modern-ish browser.
My eeePC only got sidelined because 4gb of ram is now too little for kubuntu releases. (I was going to install Debian, but after 30 min on it’s SLOW SSD it failed and I haven’t tried again) And I had issues with the screen resolution being too low for the smallest settings window before.
I used to have that CPU, but found it absolutely dying on it’s arse for VR Chat (which is notoriously badly optimised). I got a i5-8400 instead, which is about twice as fast for single threaded work (which is still the main bottleneck for most games). Your overclock would take it a decent amount of the way there, but most people aren’t going to do that, and it was getting a bit iffy even when I replaced it. Runs hot as well, I expect.
Since then they’ve got about twice as fast again. You don’t have to spend a lot on them to get that either. A Ryzen 9600X will have me set for the next 15 years (assuming they don’t ditch x86 CPUs altogether). AMD being competitive again has down wonders for performance boosts. Motherboards seem a lot more expensive these days though.
It’s only the AM5 mobos, you can still get very cheap AM4 mobos, even with PBO (performance boost overdrive, huuuuge performance boost for me at least). The new AM5 mobos are like 200 bucks WTF? Aaaand they have shit audio 😭
I dont think that GPU could handle any game in the past 5-10 years though. So 90% of games doesn’t seem right.
1060 is probably more powerful than the steam deck and that things run almost everything. You don’t have to play at 4k/ultra.
I don’t play online games, but otherwise I have a library of 200+ games and they all work fine so far. At 1080p, sometimes I put it at 720p to get higher fps.
Lately, I’ve been playing It takes 2, Little Nightmare 2, Fallout 4, Hades, Sable, Doom 2016 among others, no issues.
In all fairness, those are all very well optimized, compared to today’s complete and utter bullsh*t… A 1060 is Dldefinitely not E-waste though!!
… a ten years old PC is…
… that’s something from 2015, …
Oh my! 2015 was 10 years ago?
Aa of July 1st we’re closer to 2050 than 2000
Edit: 2020 -> 2000, derp
Hahah. I think you should double check your sources. As far as I know 5 years is less than 25
To be fair, the year 2020 was a very long couple of decades.
As a mathematician i can sure you that 5, as you have assumed, is indeed less than 25.
If you’re a mathematician how can you be dissing 5 like that?
Less than? Hell no.
5 is soo much more and soo many things that 25 isn’t and never will be.
Without 5 you wouldn’t even have 25. Some might even say that 5 is the root of 25. Show some respect for the roots.
Not only is 5 a beautiful prime number, it’s also the perfect number for a geometric shape. Everyone knows what a pentagon looks like. The Pentagon even named their institution as that. They didn’t name it after 25. Who the hell has ever heard of the icosikaiopentagon? Nobody, that’s who.
Look at the American flag. It has 50 stars. Guess which shape they have? That’s right, each of the 50 states have stars with 5 points. Exactly 0 of them chose to have a 25 pointed star.
You know what a bad number is? Yes: 25.
25 is a shitty composite number. It’s shitty because it’s not even good at being a composite number; having only a measly 3 factors: One, itself and 5 (of all things, duh…)
That’s because it’s square and boring. Does it even look square to you? This uneven 25 is supposedly a square. I never made a square of 25 things. What’s the fucking point in that? If I had to make a square for any purpose whatsoever, I’d definitely chose a better number with many more factors, so I could actually use the squaredness to divide things and mark mid points and what not. 4 is a square. 16 is a square. They’re so much better at being square than 25, because you can cut them in half and make a grid with a midpoint.
So, yeah yeah, there are probably other numbers out there greater than 5, but it sure as fuck is not 25.
You sure about that? Maybe you meant 2000 not 2020? Regardless, not sure how to feel about that…
It’s Amazon. Of course it’s a scam. I always tell elderly people it’s a criminal enterprise scamming old people when they ask about it.
This is so wrong
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Windows 11 requires 8th gen Intel or newer. You can bypass it but you lose official support and more importantly things will break down the line.
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Those listing are not what I would call “full price”
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You can buy a old 8th gen Intel system off of eBay for less than 100€
Yeah, those are basically Mini PC prices. The CPU alone used to cost more than that.
The specs look perfectly adequate (I’m still running very similar for daily use), and 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM should keep you going no matter how many tabs you open or how bloated your PC gets.
Personally I’d get a new Ryzen Mini PC for that kind of money just for the form factor, but they’re hardly a scam. The main issue is that the crowd this is aimed at have very little use for a PC these days.
Happy cake day!
Oh nooooo, however will I do the needful without Microsoft’s world famous blue ribbon customer support.
I thought they recently changed windows 11 to require an 11th gen or higher
No, that was misinformation
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Switch to Linux and keep using your current computer. Tell Microsoft to pound sand.
I dont think the people buying these even know what linux is.
Very possible.
Stop purchasing from Amazon
It’s not actually eWaste you can buy a TPM chip for it, or ya know Linux.
Windows 11 doesn’t actually need the tpm. They just check: “oh it’s Intel 6th gen, it’s trash from the last decade, sorry incompatible ewaste, buy a new one”
Intel 6th gen + tpm chip = still “incompatible”
Their marketing told us the lie “it needs tpm and secure boot” but they actually check if it has introduced to the market after 2018 or not
In those units the scammer patched the install image to install without the check. Who buys this will get a surprise when in the next months the next update comes out and refuse to install (25h1?)
Yes it does need a tpm
Anything else isn’t supported by Microsoft. You really don’t want to screw around since you need security updates from Microsoft.
Ok read the documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/minimum/supported/windows-11-24h2-supported-intel-processors
Where does it say that you can use a 6th gen Intel CPU if you install a tpm chip?
The tpm is definitely not used as you can install it on a supported system, then go to the bios, disable secure boot and tpm and it still works (if the automatic “ransomware” bitlocker encryption didn’t start)
Did you read the link you posted? It says you must have Intel 8th gen or higher AND tpm 2.0
Not just tpm 2.0
Just block W11 updates entirely.
https://www.sordum.org/9470/windows-update-blocker-v1-8/
It’s mostly bullshit that one absolutely needs the latest Windows updates; if you use uBlock Origin in your browser and don’t download/run random .EXE/.MSI shit from the internet you’ll be fine. Keep Windows Defender up to date once a month just in case as well.
But really the best option is to switch to Linux.
Yeah… No. Update your software.
This.
Also, upgrade to Linux.
No.
Sorry. We need to learn to ask nicely.
Please upgrade to Linux?
sudoupgrade to Linux?RunAs -Adminupgrade to Linux?They weren’t asking
There is a lot of misinformation regarding the security of older OSes.
There are some people online fabricating videos of older Windows (moslty XP and 7) “getting hacked in 5 minutes by idling”, with one of these videos even clearly having a web browser open in the taskbar with the title “virus download”. And when it is pointed out that this doesn’t happen, they get defensive that it will if you are raw connected to the internet. But pretty much everyone owns a modern router that would block direct connections by default, and most ISPs gift one even.
I have a Windows Vista VM that I use to play period correct and older games, even online. ClamWin is installed, OS is fully updated via LegacyUpdate and a modern browser (r3dfox) is used. There is nothing wrong with it despite hours of use, and I can keep playing with the huge nostalgia bonus of having the VMWare graphics overhead match pretty spot on the performance of a mid-range PC of the time on my hardware.
I will never let go of the 2010s
But indeed it you expose all the ports to internet (not just connect under nat) windows XP, you gonna get infected by blaster within 5 minutes
On the other hand, there were some exploits without user interaction even in the last few months.
Thank you.
If you’ve ensured your home network’s firewall is sane first, there’s no big issue.
If you dual-boot to Windows occasionally to run that one stupid program that can’t run under Linux, and you aren’t downloading stuff willy-nilly from the wild internet, and you haven’t previously installed all sorts of dodgy call-home programs, you can still be safe running while you’re in Windows. Hell, I have a Windows 7 box that runs just fine from my home network to the internet, thankyouverymuch. I even download stuff from there gasp, but I check the files first! Imagine that.
Most people aren’t knowledgeable enough to maintain proper security however so I guess I should just stop commenting on posts like this, as I always get flak from people stating it’s impossible to run an OS more than 2 weeks old on the Internet without being instantly hacked :p.
But still… as others say, I totally agree – move to Linux if you can.
I’ve formatted and installed W11 on dozens of computers and never had it fail once. My gaming rig is an Optiplex from 2014, runs 11 just fine.
Don’t do that
If anything run the long term support version of Windows 10
Whats it called?
Lstc/iot
Meanwhile I am waiting to buy a good “unsupported by Windows 11” PC cheap this October.
Same. Should be rock bottom prices.
If you think that 210€ is full price for a pc then you require some research assistance.
I just got an N150 Mini PC for about that. Should be decent as a Jellyfin server.
Could you explain why you consider these overpriced/scam? If those use new parts and come with warranty, at least the top one, seems fine. Can you do a breakdown of what it should cost?
My Windows PC has i5-6500 in it and I definitely don’t consider it e-waste.
They don’t support Windows 11
Not officially, but I have, in the past, installed W11 on a computer from 2010. And it worked fine, all things considered.
That is generally a bad idea as it can mean broken updates
microsoft is building newer versions of the kernel to rely on cpu instructions that are not present in old CPUs. you can’t “hack” around that. At some point, the kernel will ask the CPU to do something it doesnt understand.
Ok, I think I now understand the point of this thread. The implication is that some people might assume that these are brand new machines that will have software support for years to come. Even though, that’s confusing to me, as no new machine with those specs costs only 200 Euros. Like, that CPU alone, if used, cost 40-60 Euros. But IMO it’s still a stretch to call this a scam, as they are selling what they are selling. Can these machines run W11 right now? Yes. If the buyer expects something else for that price, it’s on them. The target audience could still be tech-savvy ppl who just need an older machine for simple stuff and W11 is pre-installed there just for convenience.
I call it ewaste because it is coming from that. Banks and corporations change computers every 3-5 years because accounting love to lease rather to buy
Those computers go to ewaste centers, then some not honest sellers take the components (that usually were left on 24/7 because in offices nobody bothers to turn off computers) and put them in brand new cases
That’s why is a scam, selling old stuff that came from an ewaste center as brand new
So keeping it from being actual ewaste it’s now going to be used by someone… That seems like a good thing.
The only downside I see is that it isn’t disclosed
My gripe with that is that the seller is scamming inexperienced people, they think that they are buying a brand new PC while instead it’s not
(The fact that a 400 euro PC includes 600 euro of software licenses should ring a bell about the legitimacy to the buyer, though)
How are they scamming? They list the specs right there again the only issue is that they are used parts potentially, but I’m not sure how you know these examples are specifically sourced as you claim.
It is unrealistic that parts with that age are brand new, available in that quantity. It might happens that some distributor misplaces some box and a couple computers are old new stock after a decade, but hundreds?
Also: W11 pro OEM is 120 euro and office 365 perpetual doesn’t even exist, and if they meant office 2024 home and business is 299 euro. 120+299 exceed the listing price
Banks and corporations change computers every 3-5 years because accounting love to lease rather to buy
3-5 years is a pretty standard depreciation schedule for IT equipment like computers, peripheral accessories etc.
Computers and laptops (using Straight-line method): 31.67% with a useful life of 3 years.
Computers and laptops (using Written Down Value method): 63.16% with a useful life of 3 years
It really has nothing to do with leasing vs. buying.
Yes ok from an accounting point of view.
But from a functional point of view?
I see how my bank teller works: they connect to a terminal server
I see how my other bank works: a VM that runs AS/400 that is acting as a terminal to their mainframe
Why they’re changing computers so often? The first one can use any PC released in the past 15 years and the second one can use any released in the past 30 years
I can’t speak to your specific examples since I don’t work there.
The reasons beyond CapEx considerations are things like security, compliance, warranty coverage expiration, standardization across the org, general employee satisfaction, hardware falling out of vendor support.
I doubt the banks computers are single purpose or purchased specifically for each job role. Sure a 15 or 30 year old computer might technically work but there’s no way it’ll meet regulatory security compliance rules.
The home user/hobbyist approach really doesn’t scale to corporate IT.
But “e-waste” means something so outadet that it’s useless. Or unrepairable. Those computers are perfectly fine for 80% of users.
And are they explicitly saying that these are new? While you know for sure it’s heavily used equipment?
“NUOVO” in Capital letters means NEW
But are you certain they aren’t new and this is a scam? I’m interested to know how you determined those are used.
Btw, where does it say “Nuovo”? I can’t find it. Is it not on the screenshot?
First row of the 400 euro one
The only time a tried to buy a laptop from Amazon it was advertised as 16Gb of RAM. What was delivered was 8G with an 8GB SD card taped to the box and Amazon refused to give me an actual refund. So i just assume any computer you buy on Amazon is fraudulent now
Should have done a charge back
I bought a stand mixer with the credit i was given instead and cancelled my Amazon account
At least you got something out of it
That seems like an entirely different problem from the one being discussed.
It can’t be legitimate because licences for the bundled software cost more than the machines are being sold for. Also, the hardware included isn’t officially Windows 11 compatible, so selling it with Windows 11 installed is misleading the customer into thinking they’re buying something much more recent than they really are. For a decent number of people buying these, they’re likely to own something just as new already, and could get a free upgrade to Windows 11 by doing the same configuration tweaks as the sellers did.
Do you mean you wouldn’t consider it a scam if it has W10 preinstalled instead? How much is MS Office anyway? I know there are $5 W11 keys all over the place.
The $5 Windows keys have never been legitimate - either they’re just people selling keys they’ve generated with a keygen or bought with a stolen credit card, or it’s students reselling free keys they’ve got from Dreamspark or a sysadmin selling keys from their employer’s enterprise licence, which, in Microsoft’s eyes, are all piracy. An OEM copy of Windows 11 Pro is about €150 and can’t be transferred to a different motherboard, and a retail copy which can be transferred is about €300. A one-time purchase copy of Office is about €120 (it’s also available as a subscription). These machines either have at least €270 of software on them, or €0 worth of pirated software on them.
What does it matter that Microsoft considers it piracy? If they got the keys for cheap somewhere, it’s a real licensed version anyway and will work fine.
I can order retro emulation handhelds from China and it will arrive with 1000s of ROMs, which is literal piracy, but that doesn’t make it a scam.
I got the one on the top (minus storage and ram) from a local university surplus store for $30 a few years ago. Lenovo brand but same form factor.
