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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?"
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