Pay for something free? 1802 fix/HMMs being sold on eBay

[rkawakami]

Ran into this earlier today (the Free Enterprise economic system is alive and working)...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0169339538

For $8.49, you get a boot CD which will "flip a single bit in the CMOS" and allow you to run a non-IBM wireless card (fix the 1802 error). For the people who don't have a CD burner, this would probably be helpful. But honestly, if someone is going through the process of installing/upgrading a WiFi system in a laptop, don't you think that they would also have the necessary means of downloading and burning the (free) no-1802 program already? Okay, maybe that's a stretch... not everybody has a burner.

And while I'm on my rant... how about this (one of several from the same seller):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0156345818

For $7.99 you get a digital delivery (read this as an email of a .PDF) of the A30/A30p/A31/A31p Hardware Maintenance Manual, freely downloadable from IBM/Lenovo's web site. Oh, well, maybe not that particular copy if the photo is any indication. The latest version that I have is dated September 2003. The one in the eBay description says "August 2002". It was somewhat amusing to see this comment from a buyer of an R32 HMM as one of the positive feedbacks:

Thanks, but you do realize you can get this free on the Lenovo site, right

[KristianJ]

Always there to cater for the unknowing types...I wonder how many listings would come up for digital downloads of Internet Explorer, Open Office, etc. if I searched. (I remember doing it earlier in the year just out of curiosity and it brought up several.

[gator]

ebay is called fleabay for a reason - people sell everything ... IT equipment Express comes to mind, I *8really** would like to know who buys thier equipment and how they survive.