A while back I wanted to get my dad a computer so he could chat on Discord and check stocks. I originally planned to pick up a ThinkPad and upgrade it myself, but then I spotted something unexpected on Xianyu: DELL Latitude 7370 Intel Core M5-6Y57 8G RAM 256G SSD The seller said it was in 9/10 condition and wanted 900 yuan, shipping included. By any reasonable measure, 900 yuan is a bit much for this. But I looked closely at the screen and asked the seller what the resolution was. Turns out the seller didn’t even know how to check… So I tried a different angle: is the screen a touchscreen? The seller said yes, it’s touch. That’s when things got interesting. On the DELL Latitude 7370, a touchscreen version can only mean one thing: the same 3K wide-gamut touch panel as the top-spec XPS 13. If it really was that screen… then 900 yuan is a fair price, because the screen alone is worth more than 500.

A while back, I got this sudden itch to buy a tablet, but my requirements were a bit unusual: Cheap enough Has a Type-C port Screen preferably 4:3 — I don’t game, just reading and videos Speakers have to sound good As few ads as possible, ideally none or stock Android 8 inches It’s not like tablets meeting these specs don’t exist. The Xiaomi Pad 2 and 3 series are all over Xianyu, for instance — but those are e-waste that’s been hacked to hell and back… Then I stumbled on something magical: the JD Tab, the tablet JD.com put out back in the day: 4:3 high-quality screen Flyme OS, no ads 8-inch size Harman Kardon speakers Type-C charging Going for just over 200 yuan on Xianyu, brand new Holy crap, brand new? That’s gotta beat all that e-waste, right? So I got carried away and bought one. Little did I know that was the start of a whole series of adventures.