Way back in 2006 I was working for a place that was in the process of completely switching out there current computer stock with newer ones. I was able to salvage some old machines and some burned in CRT's to build up a LAN for dirt cheap. I setup 8 machines to play AOE2, Diablo 1 and 2, Warcraft 2 and 3, Dawn of War (Barely), and the list goes on of other games. Anyhow, it was a great time but sadly after about a year I had to break it down and trash most of the machines/peripherals.
I was doing some searching around the other day just to see what it would cost to build up a new LAN with duel core machines to run the old games and then some. I was surprised to see ebay certainly has a great stock of used ultra small form factor machines that would be perfect for the job. At first I just shrugged it off and didn't really think anything of it. Then i started thinking "Ok, it's time to get one of these going again!". I purchased a few of the tiny desktops and I'm very excited to start building it all up again. My goal is to get a few more of them so I can easily set them up and break them down and take no room for storage. The big thing is should I trust refurb monitors from Newegg? I bought a refurb laptop last year and the thing was in terrible shape and it looked like someone took Cheetos and rubbed them into the keyboard along with questionable stickiness all over it. Also, I need to find some Windows XP Pro keys for cheap but I'm iffy about ebay especially when the people post pictures of the keys!