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What Should I Do With My Tech Junk?
Thomas Matysik writes "I'm attempting to de-clutter my house and I've hit a rough patch: the computer room. I've got a bunch of wires, hardware and software that (I think) were useful at one point in time, but these days it doesn't do much more than take up space. Selling it seems like it'd be a huge hassle and it seems really wasteful for me to just pitch all of this stuff in the dumpster. I've considered giving it away to Goodwill, but I'm afraid that's not the right sort of outlet for this stuff. My question: what should I do with all of my tech junk?"
You need to find out what you have in there. CAT5 cables are good forever, where as it'll be kind of hard to give away a GeForce 2. You need to sort out the junk and ID as much as you can. Anything that holds some value can be sold or given for charity.
Compared to even today's bargain hardware, stuff 5-6 years old doesn't even have the processor power to justify the electricity/waste heat/noise.
You have to be a total moron to use old computers for distributed computing. The amount of electricity you waste and heat you generate is ridiculous considering you can replicate the computing power of dozens of older systems with a single new box which uses the same amount of electricity as a single node of the old systems.
Sure, there's something to be said for using them as an educational tool, but again, you're still better off getting a newer high powered box and just running a virtualization environment on it to mess around with distributed parallel computing environments.
Ive been working on computers since i was 12 (im 21) and 50% of everything i learned has been from computers people gave me. :( )
I think one of the most beneficiary things you could do is put an add in the paper for some kid to come and take it. Especially if its routers/switches, mobiles devices. You could give someone the chance to learn from equipment that they cant afford to buy (or their parents). I know that myself getting stuff like that helped me get the IT job i have today. And Every chance i get I try to pawn my computer 'junk' off on a kiddy so he has a chance to mess around with different technology. Some of the things I always liked to get:
- Sparc Stations (non PC platforms are like tech pr0n)
- routers/switches (anything to connected computers together, token ring? i never got any of that
-scsi (een if its old, its still the whole point, an old scsi storage unit, or tape drives)
- laptops, PDAs, (always fun to have)
- odd systems (486DX with Overdrive(R) technology) Even the old computers are still fun (386 with scsi ?)
- old servers (especially)
the plus side to this, is then you dont hav to worry about throwing it away, and you'll be Serving a full portion to a kids appetite for knowledge. Hope this helps
throw it all to the curb, and let the garbagemen take it away
... and once it is securely buried in a nearby landfill, it will leach toxic metals into your groundwater for centuries.
Please take whatever steps are necessary to ensure your e-waste is properly recycled ... even if that costs you a few bucks.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Obviously, some moderator gets none lately -- sex or jokes.
This is so true. A few year ago I had to relocate from my home of 8 years. I used to have a slight problem with buying obsolete computer gear at auctions etc...
I put most of the bulky or pricey items on ebay as an experiment. What sold well surprised me at the time:
- a box of 5 C64s, disk drives, tapes drives and various pirated disks (two guys got into a bidding war and the winner eventually paid a fortune to ship them - there was more then 25Kgs worth)
- About 6 DEC terminals from a hospital. monochrome, some worked (I just *had* to set them up ;) I threw in the matching wide carriage printer
- 8 Mac PPCs, really old ones, like 75s or something. I threw in an similar vintage macbook.
- A bag of 30pin SIMs from like 386 / 486 era PCs
What didn't sell well (or at all):
- Some last generation geforce video cards. Couldn't give them away.
- various but modern RAM and a last generation althon CPU.
- Any PC CRTs (no surprise really)
Soooo... The point is if you can wait like 20 years it'll sell!!! so wait
also, there was great fun in taking the remaining stuff to the dump and smashing the hell out of it. The looks you get from people when you and your buddy hurl a 20" sony CRT into the pit then throw PC boxes and PSUs at it until it finally breaks is priceless.
I'm going through the same process at the moment. Clearing out old tech gear can be hard sometimes but as I've come to find out there are a lot of people out there who are looking for old pieces and parts.
For me, the smaller stuff that can be mailed easily (old cards, routers, ram etc.) will make one run on ebay, followed up by a run on local craigslist. Larger items (monitors, full systems, etc.) go directly to local craigslist. Anything that I have left over, will be trashed or given away at the local college's tech swap day in late August.
Overall I've been really surprised how much old gear people are willing to pay for if the price is right. I've sold almost everything I put up. It's given me enough $$ to upgrade my server, which is nice, but leads to the problem of having more junk to get rid of ;-)
Definitely Craigslist. I've been given tons of old computers by generous relatives and I'm always happy to return the favor. I gave away a SparcStation 5 and some other random equipment and people were always happy to come pick it up. If you put it on Craiglist, you can probably find someone within a few hours willing to take it off your hands.
Anyone taking old IT junk for free or without charging significantly for its disposal is almost certainly dumping.
Local companies here PAY you for your old computer junk. I get $12.95 per computer I bring in. the only thing I have to pay them for is CRT's. you get $2.00 for a DVD player, $5.00 for a VCR.
What fool pays to have their computer/dvd/vcr recycled? there's copper and other metals in there that the recyclers really want.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Or it could make you stupid. Maybe that's why you don't care about this?
Used P3 motherboards tend to go for $10 to $15 in working order, plus reasonable shipping.
My dad is always afraid he's going to do something to break my mom's computer when he plays Unreal Tournament and Doom on it, so I've been considering building him a P3 system to play those older games on.
I don't have the spare parts I'm not using myself to build him an entire system. I have a slot 1 P3 600 with 133Mhz bus, but no 133 MHz slot 1 motherboards. I have a 733Mhz socket 370 P3, but no motherboard for anything over 466 MHz in that socket type. I have an NLX motherboard and riser with no case (which I might go ahead and build). I'd hate to buy or build him a new system and leave these old parts just lying around. A P3 700 or a Athlon 650 or so with 256 MB of RAM, a 4 GB hard drive, and a 120 watt power supply is about all he needs.
If I could find a motherboard for a 133 MHz P3 600, 733 MHz P3 socket 370, or Athlon 1000 socket A(462) for nothing, he'd have his system. My wife and I are on a pretty tight budget right now with me trying to get my business off the ground. If I have to put more than a few dollars into this system, it might have to wait to be part of his birthday or Christmas gifts.
I'm not begging you for your parts, but giving you an example of someone who would gladly take some of that stuff if they could get it. Shipping for old computer stuff, even just a motherboard, tends to outweigh its market value. There's probably someone with similar goals for parts like that near you, though.
Which is precisely why you see so much illegal dumping in areas where the local or state government tries to enforce pay-to-recycle schemes.
It's Human Nature; People will gladly recycle if they can just leave it by the curb to be picked up. But if they have to take time out of their busy days (and really, who isn't incredibly busy anymore?) to drive their old whatever down to the designated recycling center, make sure it is sorted properly by type and/or material, lug it from the car into the center and possibly stand in line waiting to have it taken, then they find they have to pay? Nope, most folks will either try and hide the "recyclable" junk in with the rest of the trash, find a lonely country road and dump it in the ditch, or in the case of old PC stuff, simply hang onto it for a stupily long amount of time.
This happened in microcosm in my area. A local upscale township tried to enforce a pay-to-recycle program on it's residents. Just to be clear, these were the local semi-wealthy. Tenured College Professors, Doctors, Lawyers, Businessmen and Executives. Well educated and active citizens. Not your stereotypical poor slouches from crapsville who don't know jack about recycling. The town used to just take everything, and had no recycling plan. Pressure from local activists to start a recycling initiative and some newly elected leftist town government members pushed through the pay-to-recycle scheme and law against NOT recycling. Within a week of the new plan and law illegal dumping and incidents of recyclables mixed in with the regular trash skyrocketed through the roof. People were simply unwilling to take the time and pay the extra money to bother with recycling. Even in the face of potentially large fines. This went on for well over a year, and only escalated over time.
The township tried making everyone switch to clear plastic garbage bags, so that the garbagemen could see if there were recyclables. People just put the recyclables inside white kitchen garbage bags or paper bags and then put those in the clear bags. Or they ignored the clear bag law and continued using black plastic bags. The town offered to give people special recycling bins and to take the recycling away for them for a monthly fee (read: special tax) THAT went over like a lead balloon at the next town meeting.
Eventually the outcry from the residents and from the garbagemans union (about being forced to become "garbage cops") forced the town to rework it's plan. They made a deal with the local recycling company: The town recieved special recycling bins from the recyling company, and then distributed those to the residents at no additional charge. They then set up a special team of recycling trucks (re-purposed garbage trucks) that just collected recyclables from the bins, and would then take them to the center. The private recycler took care of sorting and recycling the junk. In the end, the town ended up turning a small profit after about a year due to the large amount of recyclables turned in at the private recycling company. Illegal dumping dropped off to the minimal level it was at before the forced pay-to-recycle plan, and most of the surrounding towns, including my own, have adopted the same type of plan. Why not? It works.
Oh, and the morons that thought up the stupid pay-to-recycle scheme? Voted out of office the next election cycle. Ain't Karma grand?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Gazelle (http://www.gazelle.com) is a website that is trying to answer this. We want to provide a practical, rewarding way for people to finally rid themselves of all those old cell phones, digital cameras, and gaming systems that they no longer use, but can't seem to find a way to let go of. Too often when people think of recycling, they rush straight to smashing things into bits for parts. We believe that reuse should always come first. If your GPS unit still works, why not keep it in circulation AND get paid for it? If reusing isn't in the cards, then we'll ensure that it is recycled responsibly. We think of it as ReCommerce. Right now we'll make an offer for any item in the 9 categories we support: * Cell Phones * MP3 Players * Digital Cameras * Laptops * GPS Devices * Camcorders * Gaming Consoles * Satellite Radios * Portable Hard Drives
If the machine runs,ask you local churches if anyone needs a free PC. I just gave away a 366MHz Celeron running dual boot DSL and Win98SE and there is a single mom out there whose kid is doing his homework on it using DSL. I have run into several folks whom I have given computers to over the years and they are still running quite happily,though they have usually passed through a few hands by then. You can also use the Open Office Wizard to take any old machine with DSL or Puppy installed and turn it into a single purpose appliance.
There is a really nice local church that does a lot of work with migrant workers that is using an old 233MHz with 128Mb of RAM that I got from an office upgrade as a simple database. I took all of twenty minutes running the Open Office Base wizard a few times and now they are using it to keep track of donations of food and money,patron lists,mailing lists,etc. There are a lot of folks out there that could use a running machine,and DSL and Puppy run beautifully on as little as a 200Mhz with 96Mb,so stuff we would consider junk can still be quite useful. As for working parts either Goodwill or Freecycle will work,and I have gotten parts to finish out a donated machine out of Goodwill in the past. I hope this helps,and remember that stuff we consider old crap could be really useful to someone who has almost nothing. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There is a non-profit organization here at http://www.rebootcanada.ca/ which refurbishes old H/W for churches and the less fortunate. Not sure if they cover shipping, but they seem like a good place to ditch your junk. Otherwise you can send it to me, I LOVE legacy hardware. =)
Indiana is considered Midwestern?
Constitutionally Correct
Those of you who are concerned about contaminating the environment with lead, remember that the lead was in the environment to begin with. We have environmentalists screaming at miners not to take lead out of the ground, then they turn right around and scream at us when we try to put it back in somewhere else.
Cute. The problem people have is when toxic levels of lead accumulate in people's bodies directly due to irresponsible industrial practices and poorly managed municipal waste programs. But you knew that. Heck, in my town, we have an insane 'green' program whereby farmers are subsidized if they 'fertilize' their crops with industrial and municipal sludge from water treatment facilities. It hasn't been treated. It's raw. The only thing removed is the water. And guess what? We now have high levels of heavy metals and other random chemicals in our produce, fish and livestock. How's that for brilliant?
When people smarten up, then I might accept over-simplified "It came from the ground" comments. Until then, I'll be keeping a close eye on the brain-damaged clowns who run industry and government. --I don't want to eat lead just because the people in charge of my food and water supply apparently already have.
-FL
One thing new hardware, especially cheap new hardware, can't seem to match is reliability. I have a 10 year old 400mhz PII box (top of the line back then) that is still running fine. I haven't had to replace any parts, though I did replace the hard drive because it was way too loud, and I upgraded the memory. I am currently using it as a server for static pages over a slow connection, so there would be no benefit to getting anything faster. It uses only 60 watts, much less than most new desktops, and noise is not an issue since I run it in a closet.