Stability is important, as the computer will be your greatest ally as you make money on eBay. Depending on what you buy and where you buy it, your computers’ stability can range from one extreme to the other.
For intance, if you plan on purchasing a refurbished PC unit, I highly recommend that you make sure the computer comes stock standard with Windows XP or 2000 (this goes for new computers, also). Now, I personally tend to recommend againts so called ‘Green’ computers, as they are using old hardware which is more likely to break down, and more importanly, you rarely get what you pay for. Anything under a Pentium 4 or Athlon XP really should not go for more than about $350-and ‘Green’ or refurbished PCs are generally more than this ( unless you buy them from small computer stores, these are generally much cheaper, as they are often made from leftover good bits of hardware salvaged from dead computers). Other concerns with these PCs revolve around the hard drives inside them,as even some of the better hard drives I have worked with have ‘conked out’ within five years or so. Because of this, the very idea of buying computer with a hard drive of such an age causes me to expect the very worst. Plus, most hard drives of that era weren’t exactly large, so generally a refurbished PC will land you with only twelve gigabytes of space. That’s not much at all, considering the size of today’s data files and applications. Obviously, a more recent computer is better.
Other things to look out for include the design of the case. If you are able to feel the vibration on the case when it is running, if it makes a lot of noise or feels very warm to touch: these are warning signs for problematic systems that you want to avoid.
When you do get your PC, try to avoid filling it up with too much non-business related applications and make sure the latest security patches from Microsoft are in place (visit http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) or even the most stable PC can become vulnarable.
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