5mo ago

Is it worth trying to make money from buying broken laptops, repairing them (and maybe try installing Libreboot onto), and then reselling?

I just love working with computers and I have a bit of money. Problem is that I don't have a job, and this hobby is quite expensive. So, I thought of perhaps trying to make at least a little bit of money from it by buying old and broken laptops, repairing them, and then reselling them. Perhaps if I get a laptop that's compatible with Libreboot, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T480, I could also flash Libreboot onto it.

Nevertheless, I'm also planning to get a real job soon.

12 comments

Monetarily? No, not at all. Repairing computers hasn't really been profitable for years. If you want to constantly play with new computers and not really lose any money on it then yes you can probably not lose money on it, but don't expect to make money.
Perhaps if I get a laptop that’s compatible with Libreboot, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad T480, I could also flash Libreboot onto it.
No normal person wants this. That's an extremely niche demographic. And the demographic that wants this, is almost entirely going to be the same demographic that would want to flash it themselves.
- He'll have to buy recent hardware. Maybe broken gaming laptops. Then repair, install Windows and sell for a large markup.

No one is going to want to but some weird ass operating system

In order to be profitable you will need to either pull the laptops out of the garbage or get a really good deal. Most of the time, the profit margin is too thin to be viable. I used to get laptops for $10 to $20 at Goodwill, but they would need $50 to $100 worth of parts and only sell for $100 to $200. After labor, parts, etc. You would be lucky to break even. I would spend more time looking for some good repairable laptops at a decent price, then actually selling them. Maybe if I had a store and people brought me laptops to buy, it could be profitable.. But its extremely thin margins.

I buy almost exclusivly second hand electronics. The existing market for refurbished computers is large, already.
The ones I buy seem to be written of hardware from companies, that required very little work to refurbish.
I'm simply guessing, but I expect that there's not much profit to be made, if you take into account your time worked.

How many people do you know who have bought something like this?
That's where you start, see what the existing market is doing, and if there is a gap.

Sounds like a good way to afford your hobby, but nothing you can live off when having to compete with big players like refurbed that can outsource the work to low wage countries.

It's doable but it'll take a lot of learning and experience to actually make money. There's always plenty of stuff available that is in working order for pretty low prices so competing with that will be tough. Also there are lots of established players in that field, so it'll be hard to compete.

Repairing laptops possibly. But that would be stuff like Louis Rossman. MacBook and Dell chip solderingn replacements, not easy repairs.

Based on personal experience I think it's tough to make money unless you resell them with a Windows OEM license, or possibly Chrome Flex. That being said, and depending on your area, there's probably a bunch of businesses, schools, etc that would be happy to let you take old equipment for free. Best of luck to you.

Parting out the laptops is probably more profitable than repairing them. There are people who will want to repair their equipment, and the supply of parts isn’t going to be infinite. If you have the space and time, holding onto parts would be worth it.
As for LibreBoot, you’re probably better off figuring out how to build your own boards around that. CoreBoot and LibreBoot are cool, but the equipment is old. People would want more modern equipment.
Off the top of my head, an Arm board with some MediaTek chips with LibreBoot which can pass Arm System Ready tests might be interesting. The SBC space is full of junk which isn’t upstreamed in Linux and thus can’t run a vanilla kernel, so there is an opportunity there. Something which could run Debian and OpenBSD would be the idea.

I think the only way you could make a business from this is if you got a repair contract with a company that issues laptops to its employees and be in charge of repairing them.

12 comments