Selling second hand items online

The world is caught up in a massive credit crunch which has turned every consumer into a spendthrift. Maximizing resources has been declared one of the most predominant consumer trends in 2012. Popular auctioning sites have become playgrounds for shoppers and sellers alike. Re-purposed goods have created such a massive niche that recommence is now a part of first world culture.

Spendthrift Nation

Second hand childrens toys

A jumble sale of second hand toys

The economic climate has had a lot to do with the boom in recommence, but the benefits of selling and buying re-purposed goods has lasted as long as it has on the strength of its other benefits. In the past, selling second hand items was inconvenient, demanding that consumers use stores that bought at low prices to create space for further mark ups. The internet has cut out profit hunting middlemen, allowing you to sell your second hand items online directly from home. Today it takes little more than a five minute registration process to re-purpose old items.

One Man’s Meat is Another Man’s Poison

Regardless of how unusable an old item may seem to its owner, the global marketplace offers up a massive consumer group bound to include at least one buyer who will find value in another person’s junk. The World Wide Web has extended the contacts list of the average consumer, introducing a myriad of potential buyers.

Security and Convenience

Online auction sites have made resale a streamlined process by offering shipping and packaging services for consumers who want to profit effortlessly from their old items. Secure online banking services ensure that buyers and sellers are kept safe from the penny pinching public.

One Stop Shopping

In a brick and mortar environment, it can take months to find a buyer. The traditional garage sale demanded that you invite strangers into your own home over weekends that would be better spent elsewhere. Today’s online vendors separate consumers into groups according to indexed categories, sending sellers a whittled down group of appropriate buyers. A single site may act as a retailer for products as diverse as fashion, décor, gadgets and tools, so you need visit only one vendor to sell a closet full of unwanted widgets.

Global Economies

The sheer size of the global marketplace means that low value items can be bartered up to produce often startling returns. A fourth edition novel from the Eighties might sell for a few dollars at a brick and mortar store. When you place items on sale, the internet gives you the potential to find buyers who overvalue items and are thus willing to pay far more for them. A buyer who attaches sentimental value to that second hand book is generally willing to part with a significant chunk of income in exchange for personal value. The online marketplace operates according to its own economy, where demand is directly proportionate to the unique personal value individuals place on niche products.

Scarcity is another predominant force that pushes price tags well beyond real world worth.

Second Hand Technology Finds

If you walk round Cambridge in Massachusetts in June, you find the streets filled with discarded belongings. The students are leaving Harvard, MIT, Boston University and all the others institutions and as they leave they abandon the things they cannot take with them by the side of the road. Many stacks of things have a little note or post it attached saying ‘take me’ or ‘free, working’, and it is very much part of the culture to take things.

On my final few days in Cambridge last week I walked the streets with my kids from one park to another, and I collected some interesting things, including some very interesting and expensive pieces of second hand technology.

A common sight on Cambridge Streets

I collected a pair of M Audio AV40 studio speakers, fully functioning and beautiful to listen to. List price $229.99. A few scratches on the top of one but obviously only had light domestic use. Into the back of the bike trailer they went and onward on our hunt.

Further down the road I picked up a large 27 inch LCD computer screen, again lightly used and well looked after. At least $200 if you buy it new, as its previous owner had done probably 9 months before.

I was fortunate enough to pass a young student as she emptied her office into a box on the street, so I collected 6 Moleskin divided folders ($26 each), 200 blank DVD’s and cases, about 60 blank CD’s and 2 nice moleskin notebooks. Into the trailer, the kids can walk.

Last year I saw bags of cables, modems and power units, and as I moved from Europe I took what I needed.

On this trip I also saw a 32inch flat screen TV but I couldn’t carry it, and a standard size LCD TV too but with no remote control. I left that where it was too and will explain why.

The thing about TV’s and monitors is that you have to pay $25 for the city services to pick them up, so many are abandoned. If you pick one up and it doesn’t work you have to pay to dispose of it, or leave it outside again for someone else to do the same. Either way not a great result. I also saw at least 10 old cathode TV’s, only one with the label to demonstrate that it had been paid for.

This started me thinking about the effect that a moving student population must have on the technology market and by extension the development of new products. Practically every student has a laptop, smart-phone, TV and high speed internet at home and these things are all paid for when they move to their university of choice. Producers must see a massive peak in September, and an associated rise in profits.

So this leads to the question of what happens to all of this stuff when they move on. In many cases they take it, but some cannot be transported and is left, either by the side of the road, dumped or left in the house.

As we all know the dumping of technology is extremely damaging, recycling a must but also ethically dubious, so how about something like the Cambridge model?

The model is also used here for cans and bottles. If you buy a beer in a bottle or can, the can or bottle has a value. If you take it back to the shop they recycle it and give you 10c back. I have seen the same model with plastic bottles in Scandinavia. The result of this scheme is that a business has grown up around collecting empty bottles etc from the bins, students in the case of Scandinavia and homeless people here.

Well, for however much you might not like the idea of going through somebody’s recycling bin for returnables, it looks like an extremely efficient form of recycling to me, and revenue for those people that really need it. And although I don’t do bottles you should see my well stocked office and hear my stereo at home!

Waste less!

How to choose the right laptop for you

After my recent post on how to be a smart online buyer, I thought why just help people get a good priced product, as a good price doesn’t always mean good value.

As a laptop is something most people probably buy online, and as it is also something that often costs a lot of money, I thought why not help people choose which is best for them. Maybe in the future I will do the same for mobile phones, digital cameras and who knows what else!

What is it going to be used for?

The main thing you have to work out is what is the laptop going to be used for? Do you need something that can cope with 3D HD gaming, or are we just looking at text editing, emails and the web?

The more you want to be able to do with your laptop, the greater ability it will need to have, meaning that it is more likely to need a higher spec, and therefore probably a more costly speck.

I only really use the internet

If most of the stuff you do is online, then you probably don’t need a very high spec laptop – just a good internet connection. If you laptop is mainly used for blogging using an online system like WordPress, Blogger or TypePad, playing your favourite online games, typing emails using an online webmail service, and socialising using Facebook and Twitter (I should point out other social media sites are available ;-)) then you might want to look into Chromebooks – or low spec laptops.

The Google Chrome LogoGoogle says that Chromebooks are ‘nothing but the web.’ They run a 100% cloud based operating system, meaning that all your data, settings etc. are stored online, safe and secure in the cloud. This means they only take secconds (literally 8 or 9) to boot up, meaning you are off and working/playing in an instant.

Here is how Google describes Chromebooks:

“Chromebooks are built and optimised for the web, where you already spend most of your computing time. So, you get a faster, simpler and more secure experience without all the headaches of ordinary computers.”

Chromebooks are very fast as they need no virus protection, have no background processes slowing them down, neither does it need updates, since all of that happens in the cloud, basically everything runs from the browser.

If you don’t want a Chromebook, you probably only need a really low spec laptop, so that could be very cheap. Regarding operating system, if you like pretty styles, then go for Windows7, as that it stable and also ‘looks good’ avoid Vista, especially on low spec laptops, as it can really slow them down – XP and 2000 are also good.

It’s going to be a family laptop

If you are looking for a typical family laptop, where some of the kids will want to play flash games, but they will also need to do their homework, and the adults want to be able to check their emails and social profiles for updates, then you are probably going to be looking for a pretty standard PC.

To make sure it is quick and doesn’t slow down you would probably benefit from a dual-core processor. Dual-core means that the computer possess more than one CPU. Extra CPU’s means that you can process data faster, therefore your laptop will run quicker.

In order for your extra CPU’s to be effective, it would be a good idea to have at least 1 gigabyte (gb) of RAM, and preferably 2.

Windows7 would be perfect for family usage, as would XP. 2000 may look and feel a little dated, and Vista is likely to cause you a lot of grief!

I edit photos and run games and watch online media

If you like to have a lot open, and often are found editing photos, playing CPU intensive games, and watching HD videos, then you probably need a pretty powerful processor, along with a decent sized hard disk, a good amount of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card. Screen display resolution is also likely to be important, as if you like HD, but have only a standard screen, you can’t display HD.

Intel make a type of processor called i3 and another called i5. These are very well designed processors and run very well. If you see i3 or i5 on a PC, it is probably going to be a good one. Photo editing and gaming can be very hard disk space hungry tasks, so I would recommend getting at least a 250gb (preferably a 360gb) hard disk. With a laptop, short of getting an external hard drive, there is no easy way of expanding the amount of space you have.

This type of user would benefit best from 4gb of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card – this basically means that the graphics card is a separate component within the PC, which has it’s only memory and processing unit.

I do all of the above and more, and I do it all at the same time!

If you can never seem to find a laptop that is powerful enough for you there are a few options available to you – sadly, they area all rather expensive ones!

The first would be to get a powerful MacBook. MacBooks are notorious for their high specs, stable operating systems and therefore lack of time spent loading.

The second would to be to buy a quad-core i7 spec laptop. Most MacBooks run off core i5 and i7 processors anyway, however Windows also performs very well when being run on a core i7 machine.

The intel Core i7 proccessor badgeA dedicated graphics card is a must for this type of user, and 4-8 gig of RAM is recommended. Depending on how long you want to keep your laptop will determine how big your hard disk will need to be. My advice would be that if you are likely to want to keep the same laptop for any more that 4 or 5 years, get a terabyte hard disk.

Another option would be to have a custom built laptop. These can sometimes work out cheaper, but you need to be cautious, as if you, or whoever is building the laptop aren’t 100% sure of what’s what, then you could face compatibility issues.

Certain processors work better with certain types of RAM, certain operating systems require certain types of graphics cards, and certain hard disks are needed in order to be compatible with the rest of the machine. Basically certain part of the laptop will naturally work well together, however if you custom build your laptop, you might have 8gb of RAM, but the problem is, your processor finds it hard to deal with that type of RAM.

Other things to consider

When choosing a laptop, it is also important to consider things like who it’s made by. Different firms have different reputations for the quality of their laptops, but also consider the quality of their customer service. If their automated calling systems drive you mad, then it may be wise not to buy one of their laptops.

Furthermore, consider your other devices like cameras and phones when buying a new laptop. Some devices may not be compatible with your operating system, or you may need to get some new camera cables if your current devices can’t plug in to your new laptop.

Connectivity is another important factor: does your laptop have inbuilt Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or infrared? If you are forever connecting to mobile Wi-Fi, or your phone to download pictures, then it would be useful to have such functions inbuilt.

An inbuilt webcam and microphone can be very handy if you are often using programmes like Skype to talk to friends on the internet.

Also don’t forget the battery. If you barely use your laptop when you are away from a plug, then the battery is probably not of much importance to you, however if your laptop battery is important to you, you may want to avoid second hand laptops. Laptop batteries from second hand machines can often be less powerful and last less time than a normal battery would.

The right laptop for you

Getting the right laptop for you can be crucial in making sure that you get value for money, as a laptop with spare capacity is a waste of money, as is a laptop that cannot perform to the standard you need.

If you need any more help in choosing the right laptop for you, drop a comment below 🙂