Wednesday, June 27, 2007

What to do with older PC's?

In keeping the current politically correctness everything "Green". One might ask what to do with older PC's sitting around your closet, basement or garage collecting dust and taking up space. In my opinion anything with Pentium 2 or older is really not much good for more than some word processing, basic internet and emailing or perhaps for storage of old pictures or programs. Perhaps your even savvy enough to make a home server out of it. Perhaps your parents,spouse, significant other, landlord neighbors or board of health are tired of them lying around the other alternatives are to donate, sell or recycle.

Donation
This one is pretty much up to your discretion. Perhaps you could give it to a relative or friend who could use one. Then there are schools, churches or even place like the Salvation Army that I'm sure will take them.

Sell
Pentiums 1 and 2 or older generally are a hard sell. Unless they are some how a collectors item for some geek who must have a particular model your not going to get much if anything for them. Pentium 3's are approaching this threshold also . Even to sell on Ebay is cost prohibitive because just the cost of shipping a PC(nevermind an older CRT type of monitor) is often more than the PC is worth (or very least going cut into your whatever amount might be left for your wallet). If you make it local pickup(or local delivery) you might have some better luck on Ebay or Craigslist. But your potential customers are limited to your local area.

Recycle
Everyone talks of recycling these days. To simply throw out your old PC in the trash is often against the law in many place depending on your local ordinances. Business's can be fined if found to be throwing away old equipment in the dumpsters. In my case I found that the local Rhode Island landfill has dates that you can bring you old PC's and other electronic equipment on certain dates. I've done this on occasion and is actually quite painless and you don't even have to get out of your vehicle. I'll be moving to Massachusetts soon so I had to find out ahead of time what the locals in my new residence do. An excellent reference I've found was Earth 911 website to be simple and easy to look up your local laws, practices and locations on how to recycle these items.

I hope this was helpful to you in some way. Pentium 3's and 4's do have some value and you may have better luck selling on Ebay or Craigslist depending on condition and how well equipped they. Your humble writer here always accepts donations too but I don't expect them. Good luck and thanks for torturing yourself in reading this much of my horrible writing.

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