Forget eBay. Your local university is a gold mine for cheap PC gear

By now, most avenues for cheap computer gear have been exhausted: Prime Days, eBay, even swapping gear in a parking lot. But there’s one place where you can find a true bargain: your local university campus.

It’s weird, right? Tuition and housing costs are absolutely skyrocketing, but the humble computing shop on campus sells gear — collected from students moving out, faculty, and staff — and resells it for super cheap. What most people don’t realize is that those bargains are available to you, the public, as well as students already paying tens of thousands of dollars per year.

Yes, this is indeed the era of the used PC, but there’s a better way to buy them than sketchy Facebook Marketplace meetups. Just don’t expect to buy any used primo gaming PC. These stores cater strictly to productivity buyers, which is why it’s the tip and the topic of this week’s Smart Mode newsletter.

Welcome to PCWorld’s newsletter, Smart Mode! The focus of this newsletter is productivity: from software to hardware to peripherals, all with the idea to get what you need to get done, efficiently.