Slashdot Mirror
A Different Take On PC Manus' 'Recycling' Schemes
Timex writes "Linux Devices is reporting that the COO of Linux startup Symbio Technologies, Roger Del Russo, claims that the recycling programs of Dell and HP are nothing more than a means of getting older systems out of use, to be replaced by newer systems. Mr Del Russo then makes the case for putting the older systems to good use as thin clients, using the Linux Terminal Server Project."
Well, in Soviet Russia... wait, no, I refuse to make such a stupid comment... :) :)
Seriously though, this sounds like it might be a decent idea. There's nothing wrong with using old systems for something... how many people out there run their old 486DXs as firewalls or NATs, honestly? Probably quite a few...
And, if ANYthing can turn an old system into something new and useful, it would have to be Linux. For all the griping about it, it's far superior to any Microsoft product when it comes to custom built applications (not the program types, thats another story) for hardware... way to go!
Oh, and I think this MIGHT be a FP... not sure
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A former colleague of mine tells me there is now a skip in the loading bay, full of Dell desktop and laptop machines. These are going back to be "recycled".
They could have sold the laptops two or three times over, but these machines must go back to Dell because "they're 70% recyclable". As this chap pointed out, surely if they were sold they'd be 100% recyclable. Which does indeed beg the question, is recycling really the aim here?
Hey.
Don't forget about charity; I volunteer for an organization that cleans up old PCs and gives them to needy families with children in school, and there are hundreds of organizations out there that do similar things. We won't take trash, but an old Pentium is often a fine system for word processing and basic web mojo, which is what most needy recipients would be doing.
If a corporation says it's doing something altruistically (open sourcing shit (MS), recycling PCs to "save the environment") it always has other interests to serve.
If that sounds cynical, I'm sorry. But it's true: corporations work for profit, and as far as I can see the only reason a corporation would want to recycle PCs is to get new ones out on the market. NO OTHER REASON.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
i reuse old pc's like crazy, too, for myself and for nonprofits i work with. but think of the number of damn new machines you're talking about -- recent pc industry growth reports suggested that ~100M of the new PCs shipping this year will be replacing old ones! it's just like recycling other materials: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The first word is Reduce for a reason -- it's the most important step, and the hardest to motivate people about.
n@
Imagine the money that can be saved by using old but completely useful computers instead of upgrading every couple of years when it is unneeded... (and spending more money on licenses for new versions of Office and Windows and etc.)
I would guess that most of your fellow slashdotters would agree with you. I would also guess that the marketing departments of Dell, HP and every other company that actively pushes their stuff to universities would insist that they need to continue riding the upgrade carousel. And they often have far more access to the people responsible for buying stuff. And more (economic) incentive to work hard to make often technically clueless people buy the latest and greates four way opteron desktops/whatever for their school. So, yes, it would be nice, but I don't see it happening on a big scale unless some university gets *a lot* of press on how many millions they saved thanks to LTSP.
K12LTSP is the "install and run" distro for school's thin clients. I have used it at two schools and am using their setup to produce ISOs for Thai schools based on LinuxTLE.
Put identity in the browser.
I'm not going to go posting a link here and bring the Slashdot effect down on my own company, but we started a buyback program in March (long before we knew about Dell and HP's plans - maybe they stole them from us!) for exactly this reason - get the old stuff away from the users and replace it with newer hardware. For us, the aging Pentium and Pentium 2 systems, most of which are still running Windows 95 or 98, are a support nightmare. The systems are not under warranty any longer, components are no longer available through distribution, and we don't have time to be searching ebay looking for a used 266MHz CPU. Besides, our customers tend to look at us funny when the bill ends up showing 4-5 hours of labor because of the cost involved in finding and obtaining old components. It's just not worth being in that market when a quality business class machine runs just under $1000 US.
As for thin client, it's a solution some of our customers like. However, it doesn't resolve the old hardware issue. Instead, it actually adds to the problem be extending the life of systems that were never designed to last more than 3-5 years. In the past week we have had a customer complain that their last 200MHz machine just died, another client complained that their last machine with ISA slots died and now they can't use their first gen ATI AIW ISA card, and we had a call from a client that couldn't figure out how to get their new (USB only) printer working with their 6 or 7 year old desktop (with no USB).
Supporting this old stuff for the SMB (small/mid-sized business) clients is a nightmare. We spend a lot of time convincing customers to "recycle" about 1/3 of their PC hardware per year so that all of their hardware is covered under warranty and so we can support the most recent Windows operating systems and applications throughout their organizations. Having part of the office on Windows XP, part on Windows NT 4, and part on Windows 95, and half under warranty and half not covered under warranty just increases support and management costs.
Is currently being used as a closet-based mailserver. Just about any box can handle an MTA and SpamAssassin.
At the Property Disposition here in Ann Arbor, they've got hundreds of half-decent computers for $100-$250 each.
I'm thoroughly impressed. It would interesting to see a few photographs of such a setup in action.
I'm wondering, though, didn't you have to install PXE capable NICs on all the clients? I picked up a lot of used Dell PIIIs on eBay some time ago for next to nothing and am still amazed not only by how capable each of them is, but also by how much time I spent using each of them. At the same time, though, they were the only systems I'd seen that had PXE capable NICs.
Admittedly, buying "old" hardware isn't a sexy proposition, but rebuilding them with shiny new way kewl cases should be both trivial and inexpensive.
If this type of thing is done in a corporate setting, it'd be done by people who would have to be paid even if they were setting up a different set of computers.
Setting up a lab with different computers would take just as much space.
Linux is free.
The parts were from his friend's basement, and he got them from there for free.
This has nothing to do with professional coders, as this is not their job; unless of course they're doing it as a hobby, which, incidentally, most people don't get paid for (so $0 for time again).
In other words, you're a fucking dumb-fuck.
Where I work we are currently replacing purchased hardware with new "leased" equipment. We wipe the drives on the old, sometimes really old, computers and "donate" them to the schools. These computers are below our specs... sub 700 Mhz. Sometimes just barely. Just fine for the ol e-mail, surfing setup. How come I saw our systems on EBay for sale just a week after "donating" them. I guess the schools didn't want them. Of course, this is great recycling. The company does not have to worry about the E.P.A. if they trash the machines, they get the tax write off for donating, and the PC's are available for $70 plus shipping on Ebay.
I was interested enough to click the link, but I get the following;
Sorry
We at Showtime Online express our apologies; however, these pages are intended for access only from within the United States.
I don't recall ever seeing such a message before. This is now intriguing me so much I may have to log into my employer's intranet, choose a North America based proxy to get out onto the real Internet and have another try.
You have that backwards. Desktops haven't gotten to the point where they're anywhere near thin client (what we used to call "terminals") in TCO. When we went from using X terminals to using desktop computers the cost went through the roof: we needed more support people and more people spent more time dealing with problems on their Windows boxes.
The only reason we switched was that we watched the applications and solutions we had been using getting crowded out by ones that required Windows, and the remote Windows solutions simply didn't work well enough. If you have the software you need available on a non-Windows platform, diskless or dataless terminals are much much more cost-effective.
That all happened between five and ten years ago. Today, in the same position, I'd be all over thin clients like a shot... alas, we have since been bought by a new company that has centralised IT and I'm not in a position to make that kind of change.