I'm buying a notebook, so I'm selling my five-year-old desktop to pay
for a bit of the cost. I don't want to sell it bit by bit; I just want
to put out an ad for it in my residence hall and see if anyone takes
it. What is the range I should ask for? Thanks! The specs are as
follows...

St. Louis Micro ATX Tower Case
NEC 12X/8X/32X CD-RW
HLDS 16X DVD-ROM Drive
NEC 1.44-MB Floppy Disk Drive
Seagate 40-GB 7200-RPM Hard Disk Drive
Gateway Millennium PS/2 Multi-Function Keyboard
256-MB 133/100/66-MHz 64-Bit 4-Clock 16x16 SDRAM DIMM
Gateway V.92 PCI Soft Modem
Gateway EV700 17-inch Millennium-Look Monitor with 15.9-inch Viewable Area
Intel (El Paso) Motherboard - 1.7-GHz [Pentium 4]
Sound Blaster Live! Value Sound Card
Boston Acoustics BA735 Powered Sub/Satellite Speaker System
64MB NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 AGP Video Card w/ DVI and TV Out

Hello 4ntonio,

Thank you for your question.

I have an associate who works for a computer reseller and when asked,
he said he would just about give you $50 for it and even that would be
pushing it. That is its actual market value. At trade, you would be
looking at 30 - 40 dollars at MOST.

So, I would put up your ad and ask for $50 and see if you get any
nibbles, then lower the price if that strategy does not work.  Someone
who is into computers may want to buy it just to play around.

Search strategy:
spoke to an associate who is a computer reseller

If you need any additional clarification, let me know and I'll be glad
to assist you.

--keystroke-ga

Slightly more than you're paying for this question... but not much.

Take a look at the Sunday ads for computers. See how much a similarly
equipped one goes for-- the bottom of the line should be pretty close
(though they will have 100+ GB storage). Figure about $400 for a
package.

Now deduct because you have no warranty on a five year old computer.

(hint: sell the speakers alone)

Maybe $60-$100 max. Make sure you format your HD 100% before selling it!

I'm sitting in front of a machine that cost me £2000 (~ $4000), with a
few more that are later and cost more or the same.

The whole lot are worth nothing.

Computers are so cheap these days, and a 5 year old computer is a
dinosaur. No matter how well it served you, it's old history.

I would take it off your hands if you gave it to me --as a second
computer. If my own computer was broke and I needed a replacement NOW,
I _might_ give you $50.00 for it.

Try selling it in the newspaper, or give it away on Craig's List.

You might consider donating your computer system to a local charity.
Not only will you be doing a good deed, but you can take an income tax
deduction.

Incidentally, while the computer is old and worth about nothing, there
is nothing wrong with old machines.

Some people prefer them.

Give your old computers to a charity?

Not here in the UK, Emmaus (a big local outfit) now have a sign 'Sorry
we don't take computers anymore because, if they don't work, then it
costs us to scrap them'.

An electrical specialist (Hove YMCA of Blatchington Road) will still
take them but they are getting very picky.

I went round with something recently and they said 'Sorry' so it then
went on the rubbish tip.

The sad thing about computer's these days is the value of them once
bought goes down faster than a car. If you want to get the best value
for your computer, selling the parts individually on some place like
Ebay would be best, since a person like myself whom does upgrades for
clients with older machines would love to grab the spare parts.
Unfortunately that machine would be useful as a test machine or spare
parts.

So total cost max cost if sold to foolish person... $250.00 USD max
Realistically about $50-100.

If you sold for parts, you could pocket between $5-60 dollars per part.