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The US is littered with used computers. Just ask around and you will find some spare ones and can avoid the $150.

Another good option: FreeGeek in Portland (and on Wikipedia if you want to see some of the other locations).

Or go to a place like Free Geek in Portland, Oregon and get a used laptop. I got one there at about Auguse of 2018 and it's still going strong!

First Option: Search for a computer recycling center in your area. Free Geek in Portland OR was one of the first. These typically use volunteers to refurbish donated computers set up with FOSS software and provided to charities, churches, non-profits at no cost. I was one of their Build Instructors a few years ago. The volunteers would either contribute 24 hours of service to receive a free computer, or build up 5 computers from tested parts bins to earn a computer of their own, that would be their sixth build. Typically businesses that were upgrading would contribute bunches of used computers for the tax write-offs. Free Geek would sometimes get 25+ used computers coming in on a truck.

Desktop computers that would do what you want would probably cost less than $50 at a Free Geek refurbishing store, including a wifi card. It might not be too difficult to arrange some kind of free-to-deserving-students program, probably by triangulating through an Elks or Odd Fellows Lodge.

Second Option: Instead of providing computers, provide the students with their own personal thumb drives. Let them know that they can put their own music library on the thing, in addition to the school/homework folder, and they will be enthusiastic participants. They will find ways to plug in to somebody's computer, somewhere, whether at a library or a friend's house, or a neighborhood youth center.

These are not mutually exclusive.

I'd suggest talking with your IT people about whether they could put together a bundle of portable software that would handle homework requirements. I used a customized version of Portable Apps Suite several years ago, to provide clients of a workforce entry job training program with something they could develop their resumes on (and which also provided a number of useful reference files, including lists of community resources). Some of the advantages of this approach are that it encourages students to seek out community resources, and since all students are using the same software it is easier for the instructor to provide support. And again the concept that they could put their own music on the thing created instantaneous and enthusiastic buy-in.

He has a pretty good chromebook junkyard that he lets the kids have access to to fix things before they have to pay for a replacement.

That is a great concept! I doubt that there is any school system that does not have a closet somewhere where dead Chromebooks could be stored. When the inventory becomes large enough, an elective high school course in tearing down, diagnosing, and repairing them would get some of them back in service while providing the students a great hands-on learning opportunity in problem solving and general shop procedures.

While many schools would not have a teacher with the requisite technical skills to take on such a class, most large school systems would be able to recruit volunteer "teaching assistants" from the local Free Geek computer recycling center. That recycling center might possibly provide access to shop space and tools, too. But given enough lead time and a willingness to canvas local businesses, the needed equipment (screwdrivers, testing frames, nuts and bolts storage containers, etc) could be obtained gratis. And I would expect that upon a properly presented request, Google would provide some help in getting a program up and running.

One of the things school administrators are likely to overlook (since to date they have not been schooled in looking at it) is the cost associated with the waste stream of broken student electronic gizmos. Like Chromebooks or iPads, etc. This needs to be corrected. Slashdot readership can take a role in helping local school systems come to terms with these end-of-service-life problems.

No one wanted them. No one would take them. All I could do is recycle them. You literally can't give an old computer away, because I've tried. So we need to rethink this idea that there are kids who want old computers running Linux. Who are they, and why can't we match up the glut of surplus machines no one wants with them?

You have no idea how many students and families are thrilled to receive a 3-year-old desktop or laptop. I've seen it. I sometimes refurbish old systems for the local horribly-underfunded school district and they are thrilled to recieve them. They are still using machines I built them 5 years ago (from even older hardware) in places. I know, personal anecdote, but this can't be rare. Need is everywhere.

Also, groups like Free Geek exist.

My classes in Internet Security at http://www.freegeek.org/about/classes/ were pretty well packed yesterday.

There is a non-profit company in many North American cities that takes old computers, puts them through a testing cycle, recycles all the parts that can't be used, and then builds workstations running linux for either donation to non-profits or cheap resale. They are great and always looking for help. http://www.freegeek.org/ According to the Wikipedia site, they have locations in: Portland, OR; Fayetteville, AR; Central FL; Chicago, IL; Columbus, OH; South Bend, IN (Michiana); Vancouver, BC (Canada); Seattle, WA; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN (Twin Cities); Toronto, ON (Canada); Providence, RI; Ferndale, MI (Greater Detroit area); Ephrata, PA (South East Pennsylvania); Athens, GA (Free I.T. Athens)

I've tried using LTS on some machines, but it hasn't worked out well. The trouble with it is that Ubuntu's quality is crap, and that applies to LTS releases just as much as non-LTS. For instance, they started gratuitously breaking sound with Jaunty, and as of Precise it's still broken on some machines I use. When important stuff is randomly broken in an LTS release, you end up upgrading to a non-LTS to see if they've fixed the bug.

For almost 2 years I'll been volunteering for a branch of Freegeek and in that tyme I've installed Ubuntu 10.04 on hundreds of PCs and most of the installs have been fine. So I don't know where you get LTS hasn't worked out well or that Ubuntu's quality is crap. You may not like the DE, Canonical, or how Ubuntu is run but that's different than saying the distro is crap.

Falcon

This. My first thought was http://freegeek.org/ if there's one near your locale.

In Portland, we havve Free Geek, which will take your unwanted hardware and turn it into systems and sell them cheap or give them away. (The build program which allows anybody to put in some time building computers and walk away with their own system as a reward, particularly tickles me.) You can certainly ship your DIMMs to them, though there might well be a similar effort closer to you.

In Portland, we havve Free Geek, which will take your unwanted hardware and turn it into systems and sell them cheap or give them away. (The build program which allows anybody to put in some time building computers and walk away with their own system as a reward, particularly tickles me.) You can certainly ship your DIMMs to them, though there might well be a similar effort closer to you.

The system you found has a quattro 3000M graphics card. Do you know how insanely expensive those are? That is not a consumer graphics card, like the one in the macbook pro.

Which graphics card in the MacBook Pro, it has two? The Dell only has one. According to Notebookcheck the AMD Radeon HD 6770M the MBP has is a "middle class graphics card for laptops in 2011." So while the Quadro 3000M is a pro graphics card, and has more memory the Radeon HD6770M isn't exactly a consumer graphics card like you said.

You really never pay full price for those Dell laptops.

Yeap I saw that. Dell jacks up the price then gives purchasers an"Instant Saving" of several hundred dollars.

I should probably point out that this laptop you pointed out isn't even a consumer laptop. Apple is all about the consumer, and doesn't care about the enterprise.

You say one thing in one sentence then promptly contradict yourself in the next. Is the MacBook Pro not for consumers or is Apple not only a consumer enterprise.

This is why you never see workstation grade graphics in a mac - just the regular ATI/nVidia consumer parts.

So you know more than all the professional graphic artists and photographers do about their profession? Are you one yourself? Fact is is many of them use Macs, and only Macs. Sure others use Windows PC and others are trying out Linux PCs but you're stupid if you believe no one uses Macs.

> The same applies to all other all-in-ones whether Apple, Dell, HP, or any other. The same with the Mac Mini.

So? I'm not really limiting myself to all-in-ones.

Do you always criticize those who agree with you?

Let's look at the Mac Pro.

But you didn't. You said The iMac is a desktop with zero upgrade ability. Even then though you don't look at the Mac Pro. It is just about as expandable as any system NewEgg will assemble. I do agree though you can get better components with custom built systems, no matter who the OEM is. Dell, HP, Leveno, and so on. Are you going to criticize this too?

Again, no. If you spend more on a PC than a Mac, that PC will *severely* outspec the mac. You can probably find a few outliers (such as Thinkstations) that are more comparable, but even those come with more workstation grade components than any mac. Macs are vastly more expensive than any equivalent-spec consumer PC.

I provide real data and all you do is talk, where is your data? Without data it's not real. But don't bother, I'm sure you or anyone else can provide data supporting your position. Then again not everything is uniform. There is no "what's best" for everything. As I've said in threads above this one volunteering for Free Geek I disassemble used and old PCs then rebuild new systems with old but good parts. Once built we then install Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, and sell them. And we support the PCs we sell for 1 year.

Falcon

Any Windows computer you buy today includes free updates to the operating system for almost 8 years (and that's assuming you never upgrade from Windows 7). Any Mac computer you buy today will be completely unsupported by Apple in 8 years and will have to be replaced.

Ah, Ah! Apple discontinued development of Mac OS 9 in 2002 but Apple still has downloads for it. Ten years and Apple still supports it, so there goes your "8 years". Of course Microsoft still supports old Windows versions too, MS still has update downloads for my Windows NT 4.

Besides any computer only needs to be replaced when it no longer does what the user wants, 10 year old computers can still be used. I volunteer for Free Geek rebuilding used PCs and we rebuild and sell PCs with 2 GHz Pentium 4 which were released in 2000, more than 11 years ago. Though slow compared to newer PCs they still run Ubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx, fine. You're not going to be editing HD videos or 100+ MB photos but you can surf the web and create documents with Open Office/Libre Office.

Falcon

You are either lying or incapable of building computers that actually have similar specs.

I am neither lying nor incapable of building PCs. The only thing I spend more tyme doing than building PCs is on the net. I volunteer for Free Geek. We take in donated old used computers and electronic equipment, which would otherwise end up as e-waste, and dismantle it. We tear-down computers into their component parts, leaving only the motherboard, DVD or CD drive, and RAM in the case. If it POSTs then we connect a network cable running from our PXE server to see if it will boot off the server. This lets us know if the mobo is good. We then remove the RAM and optical drive and test them as well as the HDDs, network cards, and graphics cards. With good parts we rebuild PCs and install Ubuntu Linux 10.04, Lucid Lynx, and test the PC.

I spent most of my day there today testing optical drives. I have a PC with IDE/PATA and SATA and I'll take the drive I am testing and hook it up. I then boot off the PXE server and try to burn either the 10.04 CD or DVD ISO stored on the LAN onto a blank disk. If successful I'll reboot the PC and run a live session off of the disk I just burned to make sure it is good. If so then I put the PC in our store for sell, and we support those PCs for 1 year.

Can you say the same? Or are you blowing smoke?

Falcon

http://www.freegeek.org/

This could potentially impact how they recycle and reuse computers, especially the fact that Apple is providing free recycling for monitors, which usually cost $12 to recycle in any recycling place around the country.

There is a lot of hooey on this discussion, even for Slashdot.

Many cities now have the equivalent of Free Geek in Portland Oregon, a computer refurbishing and redistribution center. These places typically use volunteers to tear down incoming systems, test components, reassemble into outgoing systems that they can support for a couple of years, and then provide user training, user and software support, and hardware support to the end recipients of your charity.

You leave with the paperwork for the tax write off, and the comfort of knowing than none of your old data will survive the low level read/write tests that the storage devices are put through. You are not burdened with continuing support issues, user training issues, etc.

The recipients benefit from having tested machines of course, but more importantly from having a support system available on next-business-day basis that is completely familiar with the hardware and OS, even after a few years have gone by. The support typically involves training sessions and other aspects of user support (as well as hardware and software support).

These volunteer refurbishing centers typically use a Linux distro, and I believe that Ubuntu is currently the most used one. This is because of licensing of course, but it offers the end users several major benefits, such as access to the wealth of FOSS software available, easy security and maintenance patch handling, and easy upgrade paths.

Free Geek can help you.

http://www.freegeek.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Geek#Locations

They'll say "Well, we were going to do that anyway..." http://www.freegeek.org/

He's partially right, though. Your hypothetical CEO will have a dozen boxes, yeah... but they'll likely be top-o-the-line or relatively new stuff, or something his kid may be tinkering with.

As a former poor person (in my case a struggling student), I remember what it was like to scrape up a box out of spare/cast-off parts, running an OS 'borrowed' from someone else. (props to the owners of nwark.com for selling me the bits, and to the idiots at my former employer at the time for clinging tightly to their Windows 3.0 licenses, but giving me a valid SCO UNIX kit).

Back then, and even now, most poor folk get their computers much the same way - big-hearted geeks bang together boxes and make sure the underprivileged kids have something to do their homework on - and these things aren't going to run the latest/greatest OSes. If you're lucky (like in Free Geek's instance) the boxes have Linux on them, but most of the time there's a copy of Windows ${old} installed because the hardware won't run the latest. Then there's the flea markets, where enterprising folks bang together similarly old boxes, selling them with a copy of Windows-something (maybe XP, maybe 2000, probably 98).

Unless the recipient is a geek (or a budding one), odds are perfect that the OS will never get patched, and that the users have just enough knowledge in using them that they can do some basic bits online, but not really do it safely.

Now sure, your typical CxO with a ton of machinery may be similarly ignorant of patching and such, there are a *lot* more poor folks who are prone to becoming bot-fodder than rich folk who are... especially once you consider that the further you go up the money ladder, the more likely you're going to see something with a stylized fruit stamped on the lid/box/monitor and running OSX.

I've been spending a lot of time volunteering at an organization here in Portland called FreeGeek that takes most computer related items and either recycles them(volunteers actually disassemble and separate all parts of the comp.) or reuses them(by adding or subtracting parts, making it functional and donating it to other groups or the in Portland through the Hardware Grant program). It's an awesome place to meet other hardware enthusiasts and do some good.

There's FreeGeek locations in a handful of other cities around the US. Though the one in PDX is the "mothership". http://www.freegeek.org/

Haha! Funny - I still had several Perq workstations stashed in a storage unit until a couple of years ago. I donated them to Free Geek because I was moving across country and had no way to move them. I tried to explain to them that they were unique, collectible, etc. and should be sold as such, but I have no idea if they actually followed through.

Perq was an interesting machine, and that was an interesting time.

Free Geek

If you live anywhere near a FreeGeek http://www.freegeek.org/about/intergalactic/ , take your gear there. If they can't be repaired, or stripped for parts to build new boxen, your gear will be responsibly recycled http://www.freegeek.org/free-geek-designated-e-steward/ and not end up in a Third World landfill toxifying the planet.

        * Free Geek Arkansas (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
        * Free Geek Central Florida (Orlando, Florida)
        * Free Geek Chicago (Chicago, Illinois)
        * Free Geek Columbus (Columbus, Ohio)
        * Free Geek Michiana (South Bend, Indiana area)
        * Free Geek Twin Cities (Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota)
        * Born Again Technologies (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
        * Free Geek Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
        * Free Geek Providence (Providence, Rhode Island)

And there’s us, here in Portland, Oregon. The original Free Geek

If you live anywhere near a FreeGeek http://www.freegeek.org/about/intergalactic/ , take your gear there. If they can't be repaired, or stripped for parts to build new boxen, your gear will be responsibly recycled http://www.freegeek.org/free-geek-designated-e-steward/ and not end up in a Third World landfill toxifying the planet.

        * Free Geek Arkansas (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
        * Free Geek Central Florida (Orlando, Florida)
        * Free Geek Chicago (Chicago, Illinois)
        * Free Geek Columbus (Columbus, Ohio)
        * Free Geek Michiana (South Bend, Indiana area)
        * Free Geek Twin Cities (Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota)
        * Born Again Technologies (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
        * Free Geek Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
        * Free Geek Providence (Providence, Rhode Island)

And there’s us, here in Portland, Oregon. The original Free Geek

Find a group that will recycle the printer for you.
Where I live there is a group called http://www.freegeek.org/ that will take the printer off your hands, break it down, recycle it and fund the groups activities with the money made from recycling.

Poor underprivileged and poverty stricken students. No computer, no degree, no hope.

What if we just scale up FreeGeek, say to eleven?

I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but if you start with the FreeGeek mission statement:

[The FreeGeek mission is] to recycle technology
and provide access
to computers, the internet, education and job skills
in exchange for community service.

And you tweak that a little bit and get:

The California Universal Technology Enablers (CUTE) will
recycle technology
and provide access
to computers and the internet
for students
in exchange for community service

Any student would have the ability (maybe it will be a part of their computers & technology homework?) to spend time in a FreeGeek-ish community center helping to recycle technology and build computers for reuse. Students who do not have a computer at home would be able to receive a computer through this service. Students under a certain age would not work directly with the recycling aspects due to safety concerns, but they could help out with other tasks.

I'm not exactly sure how the Internet access problem would be solved, but in high-density enough areas some kind of ad-hoc mesh networking might be possible (although AFAIK community mesh networks tech isn't quite ready yet).

The problem is that in order to make this plan work you'd need a lot of time and energy from the community. And you'd need it to happy in not just one town, but in each town or part of a big city all across California. People would need to step up bigtime to make something like that happen, and with the current finances of the state government these community organizations could have trouble getting off the ground without initial injections of cash.

I forgot; there's a list of cities at

http://www.freegeek.org/about/intergalactic

  * Free Geek Arkansas (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
  * Free Geek Central Florida (Orlando, Florida)
  * Free Geek Chicago (Chicago, Illinois)
  * Free Geek Columbus (Columbus, Ohio)
  * Free Geek Michiana (South Bend, Indiana area)
  * Free Geek Twin Cities (Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota)
  * Born Again Technologies (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
  * Free Geek Vancouver (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
  * Free Geek Providence (Providence, Rhode Island)
  * The original Free Geek, often referred to as âoethe "Mothership". (Portland, Oregon)

Stephan

freegeek ( http://www.freegeek.org/ ) recycles PC's and sells them if they have some left-over.

Linux pre-installed.

Have to check if there is one where you live.

Stephan

FreeGeek.

Did the number of people who are giving away computers with Linux installed suddenly increase significantly in the last quarter?

Thanks for playing. You've given me an excuse to post a link to freegeek.

Almost every government in the US is on a 3 or 4 year replacement schedule. Those pulls are currently 3GHz 1GB RAM 40GB HDD PCs that run Linux sweetly, or W7 quite well. The governments have a good share of the jobs in this country, so even without all the PCs from business that's many millions of PCs entering the grey market each year. Many of them are donated to FreeGeeks. The various FreeGeeks take those PCs, and as many others as they can, and refit them with Linux as often as they can, and then give them away. For free.

If you want a free PC that works well and has Linux, go to your local FreeGeek. Sometimes they have laptops.

Don't you feel like you've done well now?

One of the choices here in Portland is FreeGeek. They build PCs for folks and offer classes in open source usage.

http://www.freegeek.org/

An alternative for people that live near Vancouver, BC is freegeek. Freegeek takes all computer donations and reuse the parts to provide free computers and education for those in need.

Surely in America you'd be able to start up a similar scheme for charitable donations?

Yep - we do.

/P

www.freegeek.org
www.worldcomputerexchange.org

If either has a chapter near you, give your stuff to them. Both are great at putting old computer equipment to good use.

http://freegeek.org/ These people are awesome. They teach people about computers and then let them have one of the computers they make. Spreads knowledge and community service. I wish we had one down in the south :)

Look to see if there is a Free Geek inspired place near you!

Better yet, you could donate it to an outfit specifically dedicated to computer and technology recycling and reuse. For example, freegeek has centers in several places in the US. They take in old equipment, fix it up, then donate it to volunteers and non-profit organizations. Stuff that is too old to be saved is recycled. That way, the equipment is put to good use if it can be, and if not, it is dealt with in en environmentally safe manner, and not only that, but along the way people get to learn about computers by working on the donated ones, and people who might not have had computers otherwise get to have their own. (Helping the needy get nerdy is their motto.) See the list on this page for a list of other freegeeks.

Better yet, you could donate it to an outfit specifically dedicated to computer and technology recycling and reuse. For example, freegeek has centers in several places in the US. They take in old equipment, fix it up, then donate it to volunteers and non-profit organizations. Stuff that is too old to be saved is recycled. That way, the equipment is put to good use if it can be, and if not, it is dealt with in en environmentally safe manner, and not only that, but along the way people get to learn about computers by working on the donated ones, and people who might not have had computers otherwise get to have their own. (Helping the needy get nerdy is their motto.) See the list on this page for a list of other freegeeks.

Here in Portland, Free Geek takes tech junk and recycles it. They build computers that get donated to schools (running Linux) and dismantle unusable/unwanted components right down to the chip level, sending totes full of parts off to smelters. They've open-sourced their business model, and there are evidently other locations cropping up around the nation. Check your local listings.

What he said. If you're near Portland, I'd recommend FreeGeek as a great place to donate (and get a tax write-off, too).

Take it to http://freegeek.org/ (in Portland, OR) or the like, if you have such a place in your locale. "Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the 3rd millennium."

Well, gawd knows I'm not happy that the fire happened. But it did kickstart me into finally moving back across the country from N.Y. to Portland (which, of course, reduced my total possessions even further) and I'll tell you, by now, except for stuff like my high school yearbook, I look at pretty much every possession I own as an equation of utility, cost to replace, and cost to own. And having now bought most of my possessions twice over, I've been amazed at what can be bought at thrift stores, done without, or borrowed.

It's been gloriously liberating.

And let me note that the kind of stuff we talk about here, like Portland's own Freegeek and the number of things that can now be done D.I.Y., play a huge role in reducing my emotional tie to my possessions. Among other things, books are now just more stuff to me. And Project Gutenberg, Googlebooks, Netflix, and Hulu make most content beyond that a trivial commodity as well.

Personally, I would keep a minimum box about the size of four milk crates of irreplacable stuff. And I must admit that I'm quite fond of my three aluminum chairs that survived the fire. But beyond that, hell yeah, fifteen, twenty thousand, I'd walk away from everything else with a smile on my face and have it all again, or better, in a few months.

Let me suggest an exercise: go to the three biggest Goodwills and St. Vinnie's near you. Go to the nearest couple of dollar stores. Spend an hour (no, really) at each pricing out replacing everything that you could there. Western civilization has gotten astoundingly good at making stuff and we make it damned cheap. You can dress in elegant clothes, eat off china by the light of brass candlesticks on a hardwood table, eating food cooked in stainless steel pots on a gas stove, and you can do it all cheap. There are only three things that you will have to give up utterly: a new car, a new computer, logo-bedecked stuff the media has convinced you that you need because of the image they silkscreen on the front for a buck fifty.

Would be a super generous donation, but if you honestly don't have a practical idea, perhaps donate to your local Free Geek chapter? Good drives at that size could help in the fight for bringing technology to those who couldn't afford it otherwise.

"Scrapped" has such an ugly, ungreen conotation.

I hope slashdot talks with computer recyclers about the cast-offs. Places like Free Geek in Portland OR use volunteers to break systems down into reusable components, test them, and reassemble what still has some life let in it into working FOSS-based systems. Junk that can't be re-used is recycled in appropriately. A couple of tons of obsolete or failed CPUs sitting in large bin is a sight to behold, and is worth a fair bit for the gold content.

Most of these places don't lack for volunteer help, not when receiving a newly refurbished Linux computer is the incentive for 20 hours or so volunteering. A lot of churches, non-profits, and volunteer organizations in the Portland area are now using Linux machines to handle their mailing lists, archives of sermons, etc, complements of Free Geek grants. A lot of non-geeky people have been introduced to FOSS through volunteering at Free Geek. And a lot of tonnage has been diverted from the waste stream before it got to the landfills.

I've never had a problem with monitors there - they do charge a $10 fee for dealing with them though, because apparently they take extra work. The other good thing about Free Geek is that they don't just recycle the stuff, they rebuild/restore them and give them away or sell them in their thrift store. Which, I might mention, is great. You can get a wide variety of hardware, often times stuff that isn't sold or even made any more, and it's cheap. My keyboard, a nice MS ergo was something like $2.

If you don't live near Portland, there are other Free Geeks out there. You could even start one in your own town if they don't have one and you need one. Check out their website for more info.

I love FreeGeek. Every big city should have something like them. If you're in the Portland area, you should check them out. They give two tours a day! They're a great place to volunteer at and they're full of interesting people. They do good work.

I just wanted to mention that there are Freegeeks in other cities...

http://www.freegeek.org/family.php

Yay FreeGeek!

-Tony

If you live within a reasonable drive of FreeGeek, you could always drop off your old computer junk. If your computer is working and at least a Pentium II or a PowerPC Mac, they will install free software on it and give it to someone who can use it; otherwise they will responsibly recycle it. The headquarters is in Portland, OR but there are branches elsewhere.

http://freegeek.org/

Is there a FreeGeek branch near you?

Guidelines for what they will take

What they do with the stuff you give them

steveha

If you live within a reasonable drive of FreeGeek, you could always drop off your old computer junk. If your computer is working and at least a Pentium II or a PowerPC Mac, they will install free software on it and give it to someone who can use it; otherwise they will responsibly recycle it. The headquarters is in Portland, OR but there are branches elsewhere.

http://freegeek.org/

Is there a FreeGeek branch near you?

Guidelines for what they will take

What they do with the stuff you give them

steveha

If you live within a reasonable drive of FreeGeek, you could always drop off your old computer junk. If your computer is working and at least a Pentium II or a PowerPC Mac, they will install free software on it and give it to someone who can use it; otherwise they will responsibly recycle it. The headquarters is in Portland, OR but there are branches elsewhere.

http://freegeek.org/

Is there a FreeGeek branch near you?

Guidelines for what they will take

What they do with the stuff you give them

steveha

If you live within a reasonable drive of FreeGeek, you could always drop off your old computer junk. If your computer is working and at least a Pentium II or a PowerPC Mac, they will install free software on it and give it to someone who can use it; otherwise they will responsibly recycle it. The headquarters is in Portland, OR but there are branches elsewhere.

http://freegeek.org/

Is there a FreeGeek branch near you?

Guidelines for what they will take

What they do with the stuff you give them

steveha