Maybe in the US. In my EU country(Austria) second hand hardware prices are through the roof. There's no way you're getting anything half decent from the last decade for $75.

And then there's the cooling and power consumption difference between a 10 year old system and a RPi. It's not even close.

I don't know where you are in the EU but UK refurbishers constantly sell post-lease desktops and laptops on ebay for around £50, shipping to any EU country is usually £10-20 on top of that, if anything.

Like this kind of stuff: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Lenovo-Intel-i3-Dual-Core-i5-Q...

Is plentiful and easy to buy, again - ships anywhere in the EU.

As for the power consumption - I have to disagree again, I have an SFF like this and in idle it uses about 10W of power, 40W under load.

Rpi4 4GB uses 1-3W in idle, and up to 15W under full load. Yes, the numbers for the Pi are lower, but I wouldn't say "it's not even close". It's close enough that I would absolutely consider getting the larger PC instead.

UK is generally an outlier when it comes to the second hand market for some reason.

Our used cars go for peanuts compared to used cars in the mainland for example.

I am often trawling the UK ebay for tech stuff because it's so much cheaper than Blocket (a craigslist-like) here in Sweden.

PS: very very pedantically and technically, UK isn't an EU member any longer. Although there is some limbo period.

> Our used cars go for peanuts compared to used cars in the mainland for example.

I was somewhat intrigued by the use of the term mainland, but it certainly has some debate behind it: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3652/how-to-refe...

Yes second hand cars in the UK are cheaper, factors being that there has been a consumer rise for a while, seeing more second hand cars. This with the island effect makes for dispersal of those second hand goods more curtailed and for example you may be able to get cheaper cars in Germany second hand if the geography curtailed those easily shifting to nearby countries who have had less of a consumer drive.

Which is why my friend in Bulgaria will buy a second hand car in the UK, drive it back, sell it for twice what he paid for it. Then in Bulgaria Walnut wood is about 1/5th of the price of what it demands in the UK. But most opportunities in life are going the extra mile.

Yes UK is still technically an EU member during the transition period. How exporting/importing of cars pans out, well as long as the we don't end up with trade loop-holes - then I'll be happy and by that. Say EU has import tax of 30% on UK cars, new or second hand. Yet no such taxes for imports from say canada. Then the UK has no tax import on cars from UK to canada, so would be possible to export to Europe, via Canada to skirt such import taxes. That kinda thing worries me as environmentally, not good. But could happen.

All I do know though is that the current trade negotiations seem like a Monty Python playbook:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK0cUv3ba-o

Well, the obvious issue you're missing here is the fact that the steering wheel is on the right/wrong(heh) side, hugely limiting the potential for exporting your second hand cars elsewhere. Even then, I do know about a few successful businesses, where people have been exporting cars from UK to Poland, moving the steering wheel to the other side, and yet still making money in the process, the value of second hand cars is so much greater there(in the UK a car that is 6+ years old is basically ancient, in Poland that's still considered "nearly new").

+1 Your right, that was a glaring oversight and does also play a big factor.

I love that HN's culture is one where people can gracefully admit that they were wrong, and that's that (no further dogpiling to call them out on the earlier error).

>Our used cars go for peanuts

something to do with steering wheel being on wrong site making them useless to all of EU other than for parts.

Well, it was an example, but our technology such as laptops seems to sell cheaper second hand, same with articles of clothing or furniture.

I believe it stems from a tradition of not disposing of things, and instead selling them on (via "car boot" sales) or handing them down. I believe (and this is pure conjecture) that it's a recent thing for brits to dispose of things with such frivolity, and this is somewhat echoed in the car-boot sales of late being chock-full of brand new mostly chinese cheap crap.

And maybe if you have an overabundance of second-hand goods then maybe the price goes down as all of the friction to sell even things considered "tat" are gone.

And most of the things we would consider "tat" are not "tat" to everyone else, for instance, I bought my first computers for 5gbp from a boot-sale, for such a token amount of money it is likely a person would not have sold it another way. Thus, I get a cheaper computer than I would have had to pay otherwise.

In the UK, cars gradually migrate to the north of the country as they age.

I'm in Austria and second hand systems with an i7/i5, 8Gb RAM and an SSD go for around/over $200 not $85.

For $85 I can only find core2duo/quad 4gb RAM and spinning rust so there's no way that is a viable alternative for a RPi.

Maybe UK is an outlier or Austria is, I don't know.

Similar issue in my country (Portugal). On our largest second-hand market (OLX.pt) the laptops in the 60-80 EUR range are pretty much all described as "for parts", and their specs are not comparable to this RPi model.

The snide comments like the GP's are due to them living in the american bubble.

EDIT: also note the comment you're replying to is using a traditional workstation "slab" as an example. I'd rather use a small RPi that frees up more desk space than buy something that will make my work environment at home even more cramped!

> second hand systems with an i7/i5, 8Gb RAM and an SSD go for around/over $200 not $85.

Are you looking for broken screens? If not, $200 sounds reasonable enough to me.

On the subject of mini-PCs spesifically, You can buy Intel Atom / Apollo lake system like Beelink x45 for a similar price on Aliexpress, but it's going to be significantly more performant and comes with real storage options.

The PI kicks ass if you want to play with hardware and actually use it's pins to build robots or whatever, or you want to use it's amazing camera and libraries. For pure compute its not a great deal.

> In my EU country second hand hardware prices are through the roof.

Curious - any thoughts on why?

Supply and demand or in this case, a bottleneck hold on a supply network that has shifted from warehousing months towards a just in time production/distribution model and with that, more susceptible to any bumps. This causes shortage spikes and price rises of new, which drive up the corresponding second hand offerings.

Same way hard drives a few years back increased in price, supply and demand as a factory went out of action for a while, curtailing market supply. Also why external USB drives became source of HD's as they had a larger supply buffer as less popular at the time and more in warehouses/stores.

Small country, small market. Small market, low supply. Low supply, high prices.

Wasn't the EU single market supposed to fix that?

The EU single market has no positive or negative effect here as it's a private purchase not subject to any regulations.

I am free to buy and sell to and from any country in the world, the issues is not everyone is willing to deal and pay for international shipping which ends up quite high for a cheap SFF tower system.

> not everyone is willing to deal and pay for international shipping

In principle, shouldn't one of the consequences of the EU project be that intra-EU shipping rates should, for the same distance, be identical between within the same country and between EU countries? (Of course, I realise that outcome may not yet have actually been achieved in practice.)

In theory. In practice roads between counties are not as good so cost goes up.

One of the EU projects is trying to improve the transport links (including road network) between EU countries – https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/ten-t_e...

One would hope that if they are successful in improving those transport links, shipping costs will reduce as a result.

Somewhat. Population also tends to be centered around the country so it even if transportation is better people still have their lives setup such that practically shipping in their country is cheaper.

The EU is a single market, but that doesn't stop all the countries having different languages and consequentely different keyboard layouts. So you are looking in your country, perhaps in a second, which shares your keyboard layout.

About laptops, I mostly agree. (While the wrong keyboard layout is something you could learn to live with or workaround, in practice it may well be too unpleasant to be worth it.)

For desktops, it shouldn't really matter. One quite likely already has a spare USB keyboard with the right layout, and if one doesn't, it shouldn't cost much to buy one (whether new or second-hand).

Small market, low demand. Low demand, low prices

Except the reality says otherwise.

Big markets like US, UK and Germany have low prices on consumer products and in small markets like Austria and BeNeLux countries consumer products cost more.

As this field is labor intensive and only marginally automatable, I'd assume the wage floor is a reason.

True, but in what form factor? A RPi is small. And it has GPIo, it could be applied to a portable project unlike a clunky laptop..

I cannot imagine why anyone would feel anything other than unalloyed delight at the prospect of doing their computing on a used, broken laptop purchased at auction.

What is the size and power consumption? Can it handle 4k TV?

Also I would much rather do technical support for Pi, than some old junk in questionable state of disrepair.

I do agree with that thought, as I personally use these Dell Optiplex i7 3rd gen, 32gb desktops, I'm not a mega gamer but I can throw in a 4GB 1050ti and play some recent games at medium quality. It's definitely not $75 more like $500 altogether but still... what I do like about this is it seems like a less interesting thing to steal if you're concerned about that.

Generally though it is like a "full computer" so I don't know what I would buy one of these for, I currently have 3 Pis that have been on for a few years now continuously they're running web servers/automated tasks mostly Pi Zeros and a 3B+.

I think it's crazy 8GB is becoming like the new 4GB... 32GB is almost not enough personally.

Sure but the pi is more fun.

Not sure if it is more fun to use as a desktop a machine without a normal SSD, questionable video hardware, incompatible with x86. It is certainly an interesting toy, but as a daily driver - nah.

I agree that the $75 is misleading. That doesn't include shipping, a power supply, a small SSD, etc.

And the used market is great. My favorite for a very small desktop are the Lenovo USFF devices like the M92P, M93P, etc. You have to search a bit, but you can find 8GB models with an i3/i5, small SSD, and Windows 10 for $110 or so on eBay.

Not as small as a Rpi, but pretty compact: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0036/4806/1509/products/m0...