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I have some desktop PCs that are 7+ years old, I didn't sell them off when some small percentage of the cost could have been recovered. Now they just gather dust. They are operational, but are just a hassle to use due to their performance in running windows XP.

What are recommendations can people come up with? - Donate to charity? - Trash/Recycle them? - Turn them into an ugly fish tank? - Install a low resource operating system, and dedicate a day a week of power to assisting in distributed processing like Folding@Home ?

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18 Answers

up vote 16 down vote accepted

I definitely recommend donating them to charity. Here in Sweden we have/had Datorbidraget, a very good initative for gathering up old computers and shipping them off to less fortunate schools. I'm sure there's something similar somewhere around where you live.

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Before donating be sure to wipe the drives a few times. – scheibk Jul 15 '09 at 11:56
Darik's Boot and Nuke. – Umber Ferrule Aug 13 '09 at 22:26
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up vote 13 down vote

Civil engineering approach is another posibillity : arc building :-)

alt text

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It's like a MRI. Except the X-ray is going the wrong way. – Steve Aug 8 '09 at 9:16
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awesome, we used to put our extra monitors on blocks in the back yard – kpierce8 Sep 2 '09 at 21:11
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This arch violates the basic rule of arch building: odd number of bricks. So it is possible to build an arch with an even number of things :) – Eugene Feb 1 '10 at 22:49
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up vote 7 down vote

Use it as a server (Mail, Web, NAS), or just as a cheap internet terminal with [Damn Small Linux]. Remember to get Firefox or something other than Dillo. Or, you can hook it up to a stereo and use it as a jukebox!

You could put FreeDOS on it and play DOOM, etc. I find DOS to still be a productive system.

Another geeky option is to experiment with alternate OSs, like MikeOS.

Remember, finding IDE hard drives can be expensive (I know!), and you'll probably need extra space for a server. All these people who come up with "only £20 for 250GB" - is SATA2!? Why would anybody with that new a machine need to upgrade?

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good point about lower end hardware that's on sale brand new, old PCs can't handle it, i tried upgrading part of a 5 year old machine, way too expensive – Nick Josevski Jul 15 '09 at 11:47
+1 ... Use it for DOS games. – Brad Gilbert Jul 15 '09 at 18:19
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up vote 7 down vote

Find your local freecycle group. There's always people on there looking for old machines for various reasons (for fun, have no money need anything that runs, etc). http://www.freecycle.org/

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up vote 7 down vote

If you choose to utilize the hardware, fine. If you choose to donate it, that's great. But whatever you do, don't put it in the trash! Reuse what you can, and try to recycle what you can't reuse. Electronic waste is a serious problem, with toxic metals getting into the earth and our drinking water.

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In fact, if you're a business in the EU, it's illegal to just trash electronics. – pjc50 Nov 25 '09 at 14:37
FYI modern dumps in first world countries don't leach toxic materials into the water supply. They have metres of clay and a plastic diaper to stop things leaching through, and they are built away from drinking water sources. videosift.com/video/Penn-Teller-Bullshit-Recycling – Matthew Lock Jan 6 '10 at 8:09
If only all dumps were this advanced... Unfortunately, people reading this site are not all in environmentally aware first world countries. For most people with this problem, recycling is the best solution, imho. – Yuval Jan 6 '10 at 8:50
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up vote 6 down vote

I generally use old pcs as the foundation for complex arbitrary modern art. Other ingredients to these space intensive montages:

  • Manuals for ten year old compilers.
  • 5 1/4 inch disks.
  • Various dot matrix printers.
  • Folders containing university notes. Definitely gonna use those.
  • Skis
  • Various cardboard boxes containing crystal skulls, un-used wedding presents, arks of the covenant etc...
  • Several generations of mobile phones.

We call it art because throwing it out would be, well ... sane.

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do you have any photos? – Drake Jul 15 '09 at 14:28
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You know, this is EXACTLY what I do, but I hadn't realized I could sell it to the wife as Modern Art. +1 to you, Cannonade, and my thanks. – Electrons_Ahoy Jul 15 '09 at 18:12
I have the manuals, and disks for "Microsoft QuickC for Windows" circa 1991. – Brad Gilbert Jul 15 '09 at 18:20
Sorry @marco, everytime I go near the pile, the damn monkeys steal my camera. – RedBlueThing Jul 16 '09 at 2:55
Mmm. Microsoft QuickC. I don't have that one. I do have various boxes and manuals for Borland compilers though. Turbo C++ for dos FTW! – RedBlueThing Jul 16 '09 at 2:57
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up vote 4 down vote

Donate to charity
Technology is far away from 3rd-World Countries .. for understanding a computer ..even a 7 year old computer is enough .

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Before donating it be sure to wipe the drives. – scheibk Jul 15 '09 at 11:54
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up vote 2 down vote

I installed Ubuntu 8 and now my little cousin (5 y) uses it to play online children games without risking too many adware problems or him messing up any crucial settings.

It's also great to have children learn how to program on these older machines, since they can do absolutely no harm.

Or you can take it apart if you don't know how a computer is build (or show it to someone who doesn't and explain them how they can replace stuff on their own computer).

Though two thumbs up for donation suggestions!

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up vote 1 down vote

It depends what configuration do you have and where are you live.

If you live in small town or village, it's good donate to local school or library.

But in city I recommend recycle them.

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Thats assuming they actually get recycled, instead of getting dumped in 3rd world countries for them to "recycle". I'll just keep them, thanks anyway. – Brad Gilbert Jul 15 '09 at 18:22
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up vote 1 down vote

I would put together a training centre for underpriviliged youths. Install Ubuntu, get a fairly descent Internet line and introduce them to the possibilities out there.

Alternatively, I would just stand at the door and give one to every person walking out.

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up vote 1 down vote

You could use MaxiVista and hook them up as 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc monitors on your primary system. Of course this may be more handy with old laptops than big clunky desktops...

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up vote 1 down vote

Presuming that the computer is not in use for something already (ie has already been replaced, or is "found" equiptment), I would get rid of it, specifically because of the power consumption issues.

For the most part, a newer computer can serve all your requirements like increased storage and with free virtualization solutions you can do nearly all the experimentation and playing you want to all on one system.

But you should get rid of it in a responsible manner -- if it is a runner, donate it, and if it isn't, recycle it.

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up vote 0 down vote

I was thinking of suggesting distributed processing, but an alternative is a development web stack, if you are into that. You could probably run a full LAMP stack, if you wanted to. Perhaps even Mono for .NET or Tomcat for JEE.

If you aren't into web development, how about a plain old file server? You would probably want a low-resource Linux distro and SAMBA.

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up vote 0 down vote

I'll second the donate to charity option if you don't have a use for them.

However, I can think of two uses I have had for older PC's in the past.

1) File/NAS servers. You don't need much CPU power to run a NAS server. If you don't already have one, you could setup on of your old machines to do the job.

2) Distributed video rendering. If you do any video processing you can setup a render farm with Cinelerra (or Cinelerra Community Edition) to do your rendering to take some of the load off your primary PC.

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up vote 0 down vote

Donating to schools or giving to Freecycle is the most socially responsible way of getting rid of them.

With schools or charity it would be bad form to give them machines that will last less than a year. Be sure to warn them that they are getting crap machines. It is not cool to transfer the cost of disposal for these machines to cash strapped organisations.

Also, it would be nice of you to install a lightweight easy to use and easy to update linux distro on them: KUbuntu

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up vote 0 down vote

Whatever you do with your system (donate, pawn shop, younger family members),

DO NOT THROW IT AWAY.

That goes doubly if you have a monitor with that computer. Here in the US there are a few places that actually recycle these systems (as Rob said, they contain lead, and some have mercury) safely and, as far as I've heard, it's free. I could be wrong on that, though.

In any case, be smart and be safe.

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up vote 0 down vote

See my answer here - there is an organization that takes old parts and assembles them into whole working systems, and helps out other charitable organizations.

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up vote -3 down vote

Throw it away (except for the case maybe)!

You can buy an equivalently powerful machine for a low price and save a lot of energy. The cost of the energy will eventually outweigh that of the new pc and then there's the whole altruistic aspect of saving energy... Donating it to charity is a bad idea for the same reason. Buying a new one is also better for our (or China's ;) ) struggling economy.

Instead of just claiming stuff, would any of you be kind enough to do the math? No? All right, I'll do it for you: An old PC probably uses about 200W. If it runs for 10 hours on 250 days a year, it uses 500kwh, which - where I live - cost about 100€. Today, there are better systems that draw maybe 25W, so they save you about 87,50€ per year.(of course, if you use it as a server that is always running, you just about doubled that figure.) Now I'm pretty sure you don't need that much energy to produce one of these, but somebody might be kind enough to point out some actual data instead of just downvoting this. And how would the economic growth be false? Old stuff being replaced by better stuff doesn't imply there's no real growth.

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Donating to charity is better than throwing it away. Sure the charity will be paying for the power, but it is still better than having it sit in a landfill. – scheibk Jul 15 '09 at 11:57
Recycle or donate to somewhere which will use the parts which are possible and recycle the rest. Manufacture of PC components uses a hell of a lot of energy, so you'll probably find that the new PC used more energy to create than you'll save. – Legooolas Jul 15 '09 at 12:30
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Throwing a way a system is also generally a bad idea due to the various heavy metals in it such as lead. Not as much of a problem with a modern system, but quite an issue with the older ones. – Rob Z Jul 15 '09 at 12:42
Gets my -1. I'm for promoting re-usability and sustainability, we should be moving away from the throw stuff away every few years attitude we currently have. We shouldn't be trying to encourage false economic growth by throwing away perfectly good hardware. – Simon P Stevens Jul 15 '09 at 12:46
Recycling always saves more energy than just throwing something away. Of course, "recycling" can mean donating it or it can mean recycling the components (plastic, metal, etc.) appropriately and separately. But just tossing it and buying a new computer because the new one will draw less power for YOU is kind of irresponsible, don't you think? – Keithius Jul 15 '09 at 12:51
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