by Timothy Justice

Created on: February 27, 2009

Used computers are hard to price fairly. The seller almost never gets what they are hoping to get, and the buyer usually walks away with a better deal than they should. Computers depreciate amazingly fast, in fact you are lucky if a computer is worth half its value 8 months after you bought it new. One of the generally accepted rules in computing ir "Moore's law", which states that processing speed will double every six months, while prices will be halved.

The first place you should start in evaluating a good used sale price is to check on eBay. Make sure that the computer you are researching is as close in specs to the one you are selling as possible. If there is additional licensed software (such as Microsoft Office), a small upcharge is reasonable, but you should still not charge even close to the retail price of the software. If you have the disks with the license keys, however, you can ask more for it as the buyer can reinstall the software if the hard drive crashes.

If the processor is a "last generation" processor, then the price will decrease substantially. Smaller hard drives and lower memory amounts may decrease the price further. Also, some brands will carry a better resale value. And while laptops once held their value better, lately the reverse has been true. Because technology is changing so quickly and because laptops can only allow for a small number of upgrades, laptops decline in value very quickly.

Another way to check the resale value of your computer is to go into a pawn shop. Ask to pawn your computer, and see what they will give you. You can back out of the deal at any time before you sign the paper, so when they give you a price, use it as a baseline. Multiply what they tell you by 4 (they usually pay about 1/4 what they will sell the computer for) and you will quickly get an idea of a fair price to sell your computer.

Remember when selling, more is better. Put all driver disks, license keys, and documentation with the computer. If you found a good computer for price comparison online, print it out so that you can show the buyer what similar computers are selling for. If you've upgraded the computer, have that information ready. Just as with a used car, the more you can tell a potential buyer about the computer, the more they will generally pay.

You probably will not get what you hope to get out of your computer. But if you follow the steps above, you should at least be able to get a reasonable price.

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