Screw Drivers and PDF Files

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 00:28:31 -0400 (EDT) der Mouse <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote: I bought a few skid of Dell Optiplexes at auction about this time last year. I got approx. 80 machines for $40. I've sold 30 or so of them for from $20 to $80 each on eBay. All of the above machines are very capable of running NetBSD. There is a useful NetBSD package in the pkgsrc collection called xpdf that will read and (somewhat) manipulate PDF files. It is trivial to print from xpdf to any common postscript printer, or to almost any non-postscript printer with a printer filter script that uses ghostscript. I got an Apple Laserwriter that speaks Postscript about two years ago at auction, on a skid that also included other stuff, (including a Powerbook hidden in the bottom of one of the cartons that I sold for $80 on eBay), for $5.00. Monitors you can get for almost free. When I was buying that 'skid of Optiplexes' back a year ago, I avoided the skids that had monitors, as I have enough of them, they have almost no resale value unless bundled with a system and they're just a burden to dispose of. You can get a workable used monitor for under $5 easily at yard sales. Keyboards and mice are also 'virtually free.' I got handed a box of ten or so Dell keyboards at an auction by somebody who just wanted the SGI keyboard out of the box. I bought 'the remaining boxes' of Mice at an auction for $10, then all these people converged on me and bought individual mice out of the boxes for a buck each. I think I've demonstrated that it can cost you negative hundreds of dollars to get the software and hardware needed to view and print PDF documents. That's what I've spent on 'commodity' PeeCee hardware in the last several years. -Scott