There are 28 Micro Center stores scattered around the nation in 19 states, and each one of them has Mac deals on the latest ’round on what Apple has to offer, as well as good pickings on refurbished M3 Macs, too. From the time of writing this article through the next 10 days, you can […]
Category Archives: Online Thrifter
Who could’ve predicted that certain technical iterations would stick around for much longer than expected? Back in the 80s and 90s, external and internal ports would seemingly iterate more frequently as years go by, with the computer industry being less developed then. It’s been two decades since the first Mac shipped with a SATA drive, […]
I was always the type of person who upgraded my phone every year through my carrier, until I wasn’t. I was always the type of person who looked at phone specs and conjured in my own imagination what the experience could be like. I’d get so hyped over the new stuff that my own excitement […]
This is a cautionary tale about listening to your gut feeling. I have always preferred the look of a blackbook (black MacBook) and had come across one on a local selling website. It was advertised as a 2008 MacBook in working order, except that the trackpad button didn’t click so it required an external mouse. […]
If you’ve got the passion, patience, and money, you too can be an online thrifter. For this week’s article, I thought I would share some of the tricks I have used to amass my collection at a fraction of the price.
The Macintosh Quadra 700. This was always a Mac that interested me; essentially the same old beige tower, but with a twist. Sitting on molded plastic legs, the tower has a vertically placed 3 1/2” floppy drive at the top center of the computer. This Macintosh has a 25 MHz Motorola 68040 processor, can take […]
Patience is a virtue, or so it is said. It came in handy with a local seller who was selling a 1991 Apple “for parts” (as the ad stated). It was a small nostalgia and collectibles store that seemed to specialize in music, bikes, and anything else that caught the owner’s eye.
Certain Apple computers are harder to find than others. The Macintosh Portable, the 128K, the G4 Cube, TAM, etc. My find was just as rare, due to it only being available to the educational market. Some call it the Molar Mac.
It’s all about the hunt and the thrill of the deal. I scour online ads for days at a time, looking for that precious PC being cast aside. This week’s bounty: a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, an Atari 600XL, and a TI 99/4A.
