What to do with old computers? [closed]

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What to do with old (example: 7+ years) PCs?

As I upgrade to new machines, I'm starting to have old-ish but usable computers lying around. Currently, it's a 3-yo Samsung X20 1600 and a G3 iBook, roughly 8 years old. They are not exactly mobile anymore (the iBook's battery is dead and the X20's lasts for about 30 minutes).

I see basically three options:

• dispose of them, which I don't like because it seems wrong to me that such sophisticated technology should be dumped just because it doesn't run OSX fast enough anymore.
• sell them, but I wouldn't get a lot and also, like disposing, it's kinda boring ;)
• give them a new battery, maybe even some well-chosen hardware upgrades, and give them a second life.

Now, I'm mostly interested in cool ideas for new uses, those may involve disassembly, modding and buying additional parts.

Answer 1

I know every geek hates working computers being put to rest. However, just trying to "Keep them alive" as a goal in itself is misguided. Keeping them in a box in the attic is far more environmentally friendly than keeping them up as a little dedicated wiki server. At least gathering dust they do not consume energy.

What you have on your hands, the moment you bought these, is future e-Waste. You can't change that. For your own needs the machines have obviously come to the end of their normal useful life. But maybe for someone else that may not be the case.

Three main options come to mind:

1. Put it on eBay. Put in a minimum price that can act as a selective treshold. Getting people to pay some money for these things is a strong indicator that they have plans for the machines at least for a little while. Con: You have no further say in what happens after that.
2. Give it to charity. Since they are not directly market driven, maybe they can get the economics to work up to a place where eBay can't. Con: you are probably moving the machines closer to a place on earth where after a brief useful stint it will be dismantled in less than ideal circumstances.
3. Take it to a local scrapper that you know does an honest job. You decide where and when it ends. Con: it realy is the end of the line for that machine. Maybe the person that would have bought this of eBay will now be in the market for a brand new piece of eWaste 6 months earlier.

Your choice.

Interesting side note: Suppose you would have taken the long view: how much more useful life could you have bought by spending more from the outset. E.g. How much longer would I keep an Core I7 975 machine running as opposed to just settling for the Celeron 3300 build? Is there a "green sweet spot" to be found?

Answer 2

For desktops, I would always say take apart and rebuild - It is how I learnt.... Laptops are a little harder.

The good things to do would be to load on an alternative operating system and learn (However, from your past questions, it seems you are already use a few!)... But this hasn't been such a big thing as virtualisation is better.

For laptops, If these really are spare, I would personally either give to charity or keep as a backup "just in case".

Or, you can mod them in to picture frames, however the usefullness is debatable because of electricity costs - however, if you do not mind that, it is a fun thing to do.

My dream was always to convert a few of my spare laptops in to a wall mounted machines and build an intercom type system... But just never had the time.

Answer 3

Give them to charity: computeraid.org - help a developing country

If you donate or sell them then make sure the hard drives are adequately wiped - look for a DoD standard eraser tool.

If you are considering some kind of modding project then consider www.instructables.com or the Designing Embedded Hardware book for O'Reilly: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596007553/

Answer 4

I agree with your feelings of not disposing them. And you can probably utilize them better than anyone who would be given them if you'd choose a donation.

I like the idea of turning old metal into some handy server at your place. Why to buy some VPS for prototyping or whatever if you can make the host by yourself?

Laptops are amazingly good for it: they are silent, don't heat too much, don't take too much place. If you put a SSD disk inside they make barely any noticeable sound (probably not possible for a G3 but this Mac should be already very quiet). You don't have to make a server room for the laptop, just put it on a shelf, plug the AC, set the net up and configure power settings so it doesn't sleep with lid closed. You have another machine to ssh into. Dead simple.

An extreme example: friend of mine successfully hosted a serious webserver for a customer for years on a laptop on a shelf between the books in his living room. A bit tricky as this was production and he had no hw redundancy, but you don't have to be that serious.

I remember most of the servers we ran 15 years ago were much worse than todays 10 years old laptops, still you could have lots of usable stuff even on an i386.

Answer 5

You can build a lot of fantastic things. Lots of interesting ideas have already been mentioned.

My suggestion is to buy Arduino, replacement batteries and building a robot.

However, if you do not have time for such fun, here is a great (probably - I had no personal contact with them) project for re-use old hardware: http://freegeek.org/

Answer 6

I have an 7 year old iBook which functions as a HTPC and mediastreamer,... Just installed linux and XBMC and way to go.... It is silent and does not consume all that much power with the screen turned off.

My desktops are nowadays being added to my own private cloud... If it has diskspace or computing power it will do... You can turn it into whatever you like.

• Firewall (ipcop / smoothwall)
• Fileserver (freenas / readynas)
• Mediacenter (linuxmce / XBMC)
• Cloud for free (ubuntu server 9.10)

Answer 7

Just tell the local Linux group. They'll figure out a few ways of making the maximum from it charity wise or to show that Linux runs on old hardware really fine.