A non-profit with which I'm affiliated typically sells pallets (50-100 machines) of machines in single lots. This helps get rid of lots of machines with very few transactions!
Unfortunately, there is a limit to the number of folks willing to shell out a couple of grand at a time for a "lot".
So, they are looking into selling individual machines on-line (CL, eBay, etc.).
As this increases the effort required "per machine", I'm looking for ways to trim that effort back to as little as possible.
I see a machine as existing in several different states:
We can't strictly sell "as is" because we have to sanitize the disk(s) and remove other identifying (previous owner) information from the machine. But, we can opt to pull drives as a quick expedient to safeguarding that data. Note this leaves the machine in the "memory but no disk" state -- except, there are no guarantees that it even powers up (though we won't sell it if parts are obviously missing).
[Anything above "as is, where is" has undergone some sort of testing so you aren't stuck with a DoA -- or even a machine with a noisey fan!]
"Fully functional" requires a fair bit of effort. So, we'd like to avoid that as we don't have the labor required to do this in the quantities involved (hundreds per week).
I'd like to come up with some ball-park figures indicating the RELATIVE "worth" of a machine in each of these states. E.g., if "as is, where is" is worth $X (to our customers), how much is adding a wiped, but refurbished (unknown age) disk? Installing an OS? Shipping charges? (current local buyers don't have to pay for shipping so they see that as a savings!)
I can't imagine wanting to buy a machine with software preinstalled as you've no idea what else might accompany that software! (or, if it is pirated, etc.). But, casually browsing eBay I see a variety of different offerings for nearly the same machine(s) -- with/without software, disk, etc.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to the number of folks willing to shell out a couple of grand at a time for a "lot".
So, they are looking into selling individual machines on-line (CL, eBay, etc.).
As this increases the effort required "per machine", I'm looking for ways to trim that effort back to as little as possible.
I see a machine as existing in several different states:
- "as is, where is"
- stripped of memory/disk
- memory but no disk
- disk but no OS (CoA iff it's affixed to the case)
- fully functional (with "whatever" OS/drives is appropriate)
We can't strictly sell "as is" because we have to sanitize the disk(s) and remove other identifying (previous owner) information from the machine. But, we can opt to pull drives as a quick expedient to safeguarding that data. Note this leaves the machine in the "memory but no disk" state -- except, there are no guarantees that it even powers up (though we won't sell it if parts are obviously missing).
[Anything above "as is, where is" has undergone some sort of testing so you aren't stuck with a DoA -- or even a machine with a noisey fan!]
"Fully functional" requires a fair bit of effort. So, we'd like to avoid that as we don't have the labor required to do this in the quantities involved (hundreds per week).
I'd like to come up with some ball-park figures indicating the RELATIVE "worth" of a machine in each of these states. E.g., if "as is, where is" is worth $X (to our customers), how much is adding a wiped, but refurbished (unknown age) disk? Installing an OS? Shipping charges? (current local buyers don't have to pay for shipping so they see that as a savings!)
I can't imagine wanting to buy a machine with software preinstalled as you've no idea what else might accompany that software! (or, if it is pirated, etc.). But, casually browsing eBay I see a variety of different offerings for nearly the same machine(s) -- with/without software, disk, etc.
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