US frenzy over used laptops — EGADS!
RICHMOND, AUGUST 17: A rush to purchase $50 used laptops has turned into a violent stampede, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over. One woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.
“This is total, total chaos,” said Latoya Jones, 19, who lost one of her flip-flops in the ordeal and later limped around on the sizzling asphalt pavement with one foot bare.
An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond International raceway in Henico county, Virginia, in hopes of getting their hands on one of the 4-year-old apple iBooks, which retail for between $999 and $1,299 when they are new. Henico County Public Schools were selling 1,000 of the computers to residents.
I’m shocked at the prices of used Apple products. I was thinking about buying a used Mac to try out. I was thinking a dual 1ghz system. I wasn’t concerned with hard drive space, ram, etc, as I was prepared to fill that up myself.
As I said the prices SHOCKED me. For the price of a four year old Mac I could easily build a top of the line ultra-modern Wintel system. (Actually, I’d use AMD not Intel.)
What I’m curious about is it practicality at work or emotion. In other words, are Mac-heads setting high prices due to their emotional attachment to their machines. Or are the prices high because the machines can actually keep up with modern systems. (Mac-heads are generally not gamers, so the latter could be true.)
Regarding the laptops from the story, I’d guess that most of those will be sold off on ebay for a LOT more money.
We saw it here in Portugal! Amazing! At first I thought ‘look at those crazy people, it looks like some civil war…’ but then I thought, maybe these are poor people and this is the only way they can afford a decent ‘PC’… And then I thought, heck, for 50 bucks I’d be there too!
A different site ran a story on this mass stupidity. In it, one person even gave his name before saying, “People were cutting in front of me so I started hitting them on their heads with my folding chair. I got here first, so I figure it was just.” I’d like to have a cheap mac (HA!) too, but not bad enough to dive into that crowd.
Wait until the gas ration lines. I saw guys waving bats at people in 72. The nation is much better armed today.
John do you sleep? most of your posts are between 4 an 6 am? You must hit the hay around 7pm to get up that early huh?
Well, they are Apple laptops…
When you mention cheap PCs to neophytes, they get excited. When you mention cheap laptops, it’s like the second coming.
I’d love a mac…. can’t afford one though. My take: Just wait for a good, stable, easy to install version of OS X for a PC (which is not very far away) and build my own. Couple hundred bucks, got myself a mac! 🙂