The Zereps

OK, OK. I know what you’re thinking… a gross, food-covered, foul-smelling pentium-3 laptop that somebody threw away because they couldn’t even run windows xp home on it, but think again! Read on for the facinating details of how I found this computer of miniture stature and how it changed my life…

I was just walking down the stairwell in the building I work in (I’m on the second floor and the elevators are extremely slow, so I take the stairs.) On the ground floor, there are dumpsters beside the freight elevators. (We’re not talking about huge dumpsters here.. just the waist-heigh ones that are like 4×6′.) I was walking past, like I do every day on my way to lunch, when I saw it, and did a double-take. But there were people around, so I couldn’t draw too much attention to myself. The super was there talking loudy to the mailman who had just dropped off some mail, so I stood outside the building inconspiciously (well, sort of) for I would say almost 10 minutes. Then, he vanished so I made my move. I ran back in there and snatched it–the laptop was mine!

Now to inspect my newly found treasure. I took it back upstairs and back into the office. I turned out to be an HP ze4560US (and it only had minor food spillage on it!) I couldn’t really find any good pictures of one, unfortunately, but here’s one:

It has an AthlonXP 2500+ (1.87Ghz) Mobile Processor, 40GB Hard Drive, DVD-ROM Drive, No Ram (but I’m going to add 1GB to it!), 802.11g wireless built in, and some sort of ATI Radeon Mobile video card, and a battery.
AND, the best part of all is that IT TURNS ON! When I first saw it, I thought, “oh, maybe I’ll be able to sell it on eBay for $200 for parts” but no! oh no! Luckily for me, my work has several similar models of HP laptops that use the same power adapter. I plugged it in (and put int some RAM,) turned it on, and boom! I was in business with somebody’s old spyware infested Windows XP Home OS (which will be promptly wiped out as soon as I find the time.) I’m pretty stoked that it has DVD and wireless built in. But, how lucky is that!? Finding a working (and not too shabby) laptop in a dumpster!

If you happen to be one of the 80 or so people who visit this site every week and you happen to work in my building and are missing an HP Laptop–too bad!!! Finders Keepers. ]:)

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