The Start9 Restart Program
Start9 is committed to ensuring these devices find new purpose in the homes of sovereign individuals who are looking to opt out and break free, in many cases, from the very companies who discarded them.
Today we are thrilled to announce the Start9 Restart Program, as well as its first batch of repurposed servers!
Background
In the course of business, companies must refresh their IT infrastructure, including various types of computing devices. Ideally, this is done well in advance of any hardware issues or failures, while the devices still have many years of life remaining. Moreover, since these devices were purchased for enterprise use, they generally tout impressive technical specifications.
While it is easy enough for electronics recyclers to repurpose laptops for resale to low income end-users, they have a difficult time finding homes for mini PCs, since they are only useful when combined with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, which increases both the monetary cost and physical footprint, while also reducing mobility.
The end result? Tens of thousands of mini PCs with powerful chips, plenty of RAM, and nowhere to go. Often, electronics recyclers are forced to manually disassemble these devices, selling what little they can and trashing the rest.
If only there were market demand for powerful, low-cost mini PCs. People don't run servers, do they?
About the Program
Start9 is now working with electronics recyclers to acquire batches of decommissioned corporate mini PCs for resale as personal servers. Ironically, many of these devices will originate from banks and will now be used for Bitcoin and Lightning nodes. As the saying goes: one man's trash...
After being fitted with brand new SSDs, flashed with StartOS, and run through a battery of tests, these once unwanted devices will be reborn as home servers for sovereign individuals and families, warrantied and backed by Start9.
The retail price of these refurbished devices will vary from batch-to-batch, but they will always be an exceptional deal. For example, our first batch is the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 (below). It touts a fast NVMe SSD, 16GB of RAM, and a 4-core, 4-thread, Intel i5-7500T processor that delivers more than 2x the performance as the 2023 Server One, starting at just $329 for the 2TB option.
Sovereign Computing for a Free Future
We hope this program will help lower the barrier to entry to running a personal server and accelerate the emergence of the Sovereign Computing paradigm. Moore's law and the mass proliferation of computers over the last decade has produced an abundance of retired yet functional devices that pack more than enough power to satisfy the hosting needs of most individuals and families. Start9 is committed to ensuring these devices find new purpose in the homes of sovereign individuals who are looking to opt out and break free, in many cases, from the very companies who discarded them.