Dell Offers Curbside Computer Recycling

schm00 writes "A Dell press release today announced an expansion of thier recycling program. For $15 they will arrange to pick up used computer equipment from your home and transport it to an EPA approved recycler. You can order pickup starting on March 25th. It's nice to see an alternative to the darker side of computer recycling."

Comments

Very good

[geddes]

I was talking to a friend of mine just yesterday:

"I have this old broken Monitor that I am going to replace - how can I get rid of it"

"Well you can either dump it illegally or pay someone to get it recycled"

"Well, I don't want to break any laws or hurt the environment. Who do I contact? How much does it cost?"

"Ummm"

This is a good solution to a dilema that many face - how to recycle thier old computer stuff ethically. This makes it easy and relativly painless - it still seems rediculous to pay to recycle the stuff, but $15 is pretty good compared to going rates.

Re:I've got an idea.......

[toddestan]

Well do you want to do it? How long do you think it would take to set it up and configure? What happens once you give it to someone, then something craps out? Do you really want to be stuck supporting all these various old computers, each one different than the others?

Personally, I would not want to spend my day trying to get Linux running on a bunch of 486/Pentium class systems. Supporting the old hardware, obscure drivers for sound, video, and CD. All the flakey hardware too, enough to make me pull my hair out.

Also, I find that many of the faster computers that get thrown out not because they are too slow it's because they are simply cheap peices of shit. Hell, recently I recycled a 333Mhz machine (eMachine), a 200Mhz machine (Packard Bell), 380Mhz (no-name pile of crap). These computers were plenty fast, but they simply crashed if you looked at them the wrong way. I kept and still use two HPs, a 75Mhz and a 100Mhz which are both rock solid.

Probably what you would end up doing is taking the best computers in the lot, and trashing the rest because it's too old/too flakey/not supported/not worth the time/simply busted/etc. And you are back to your old problem, what to do with the 9/10 or whatever computers that you don't want?

I do my part at my work...

[cr0sh]

In a way, I suppose...

Recently, my work threw out a nice Compaq Presario 1610 laptop (P150, 1.6gig, cd-rom, built in speakers), simply because the screen wouldn't come on. I pulled it apart, replaced the backlight with one from Fry's Electronics, and will soon be getting a 64 MB SODIMM from Kingston. I later plan on upgrading the hard drive to something more reasonable (probably a 4.3 gig drive), and dropping Debian or something on it.

A couple of years ago I grabbed a PowerTower 166 they didn't want anymore - one of these days I will put YDL on it and play.

My work throws out a lot of stuff, I try to rescue as much of it as I can, and give it to those who can use it. I have a bunch of motherboards that could make great firewall bases, or robotics dev platforms for the right motivated people...