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Proper Disposal Of Old PCs?
IMNTPC writes "Over the years, I've advanced from a 386DX-33 to a Celeron 1.3 Ghz system. I've slowly been accumulating enough old parts that now I think it's time to start disposing of anything that predates a Pentium 166. Does anyone know of a good place that will properly dispose/recycle of these old parts and PCs for little or no money? So far I've found pcdisposal.com, but anyone know of any others, either online or physical dropoff points in major metropolitan areas?"
When I lived in Sydney, one of the nearby dumps had an area where old computing equipment could be left. It -claimed- to recycle these properly, but I can't vouch for the truth behind that.
:)
There seem to be many places that will take ancient working machinery too, and use it as donation equipment - for some people, a simple 386 is heaven. In 2001 I helped shuffle some of this stuff around, and for students who had absolutely no access to a computer for doing university work at home, a 386 that could edit text was a godsend. No, it's no use for software development or comp sci courses, but for those students who do only need to type up essays and the like, a simple machine with floppy is well appreciated and more than enough. Not every college course is comp.sci or IT.
Personally, I just get a new one and push the old ones to the side. They seem to become part of the furniture and I don't notice they're there any more
There's always Goodwill. They'll take it and put it up for sale for ya. I buy a lot of old Macs from there. Their pricing is a bit odd with regards to computers, the bigger the box the bigger the price, that's the way they do it here. So while I got a 600Mhz desktop for 90$ they wanted almost twice that for a huge ppro machine hehe. Oh, and don't forget your local Churches and boy & girl scout organizations - they have computer/PC merit badges and a used PC is a great way to get their feet wet!
Wil Wheaton? - What a self promoting whore.
if you live in belgium, then you can give back the parts to electronics dealers, or dispose of them ecologically soundly at a community dump. we pay a small recycling tax on all electronics over here, and that is used for disposal. ps, this post comes from a p166. merry xmas, potor
Sorry, but this is an urban legend and could get you in to trouble with the IRS.
The value of your old 386, when you donate it, is NOT the $3000 you originally paid for it. The value of your old 386, for tax donation purposes, is what a reasonable person would pay for it on the open market...in otherwords, maybe $20.
This applies to anything you donate that is used, not just computers. If that old junk heap of a vehicle in your front yard would only get $300 if sold, then that is its value for tax donation purposes. Giving it to the Goodwill does not allow you to write off the $17,000 purchase price when it was new. And the fact that organizations give you a blank receipt and allow you to write in your own value does not change tax law.
Will you get caught and busted for overstating the value? Probably not, unless you do it all the time. But still you should be aware of what you are doing when you put it on that tax form.
Usually here I would put the usual IANAL, but this case is different. Besides being a computer programmer, this time of year I also am a paid tax preparer with bookoo training on the subject, and my mommy works for the IRS.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
As the IT person at a local school, I accept any Pentium based machine with PCI slots. Add one 100Mb NIC, disable the hard drive, make a boot floppy and I've got myself a perfectly good X terminal to connect to my LTSP (http://www.ltsp.org) server. The slowest machine I have like this is an old AST Pentium 75. Runs Mozilla, OpenOffice and most everything else perfectly. Even runs our Windows based reading software via Wine. I am fortunate to work at a school where most of the administration supports me and trusts my judgement. They also seem to like the money I save by not using Microsoft products on every computer.
there is the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. They even have a list of fees that they charge to make sure they can properly dispose of the items. They take many types of electronics, "We want everything you can plug in that you don't put food inside of." They also turn around and provide computers and other things that work or are repaired to schools, charities, non-profits, and disabled folks. So it's a win-win situation, you get rid of your computer parts and they help someone else.
Does your $30 router have near-infinitely adjustable firewall rules? A real DMZ (real = separate subnet)? The ability to act as a VPN endpoint? Cool traffic graphs and logging? Even in the age of $30 router/switch combos, an old PC is still a great way to get features that come mostly on very expensive corporate routers and firewalls.
Old PCs also make awesome little servers. Even a family of neophytes with multiple computers could use a shared file space, and us geeks can set up our own file/web/FTP/DNS/DHCP/time/backup/whatever servers. Personally, I have a P166 as a router, a P133 web server, and a P133 backup server. My file server is a Tbird900 only because I use it as a desktop sometimes.
It's an operating system, not a religion.