What do people do with their old computers?

fluppet

Here is a very rough calculation:

~1m households in Ireland
We'll say 25% of them have a computer (probably underestimation)
We'll say that most people get a new computer every 6 years and want to get rid of their old one (probably slight overestimation)

That means there should be about 250,000/6 computers that people want to get rid of each year (not even including those from businesses), which would be over 100 computers per day. We'll then say that Dublin contains a quarter of the country's population, so that should be about 25 computers per day in Dublin.

I've probably done some significant over-estimating, but there should still be quite a large number of computers that people want to get rid of.

I've been on the look-out for an old computer for quite a while - keeping an eye on Freecycle Dublin, Dublin Waste FreeTrade and Adverts.ie Freestuff but it's very rare to see anyone offering computers... so what do all these people do with their old computers then? I find it hard to believe that someone would just throw-out a 5-6 year old computer...

Huggles

fluppet wrote:

so what do all these people do with their old computers then? I find it hard to believe that someone would just throw-out a 5-6 year old computer...

I donated mine to the local primary school. They have a pretty niffty imac G3 there now for the kids to doss around on

themole

When a pc is 6 years old it rarely still works. So most people would just dump them, or put them in the shed to forget about.

Or better still, give them to charities like camara

projectmayhem

i passed my last one down to my brother (though it's only 2 years old, still top notch), but if i couldn't do that i'd probably give it to my old primary school or a hospital for the kids, etc. etc.

Ruu_Old

TheGooner wrote:

I donated mine to the local primary school. They have a pretty niffty imac G3 there now for the kids to doss around on

Same with me, they were eligible to get free broadband or something but had no computers so I had two that I gave away and wasn't using.

Degsy

Dump em in a hedge!

Winters

Cluster the fuckers together \o/

Anti

Winters wrote:

Cluster the fuckers together \o/

QFT !

Or i add them to my folding farm

fluppet

themole wrote:

When a pc is 6 years old it rarely still works.

I disagree. Most of the hardware in a computer should last much longer than 6 years. Under heavy usage there is a possibility that the hard drive might fail after that amount of time, but that can easily be replaced. My own computer is 10 years old and runs Win XP no problem.

Mossy Monk

Upgrade.

dame

Does the producer's recycling fund apply to computers like it does to fridges and toasters and things? If it does, I'd return my old one when buying the new one, and get a bit of money back for it.

jester77

Make an NAS server out of it and stick it on the home network.

Voodu Child

I glue the circuit boards onto my clothes and pretend i'm a robot....or, just throw them out, whichever is handiest.

Zillah

We could build a pyramid!!

Duggy747

I'm working in the IT dept in a County Council and we've got a MOUNTAIN of PC's stacked in the storeroom, easily 20 - 30 of the bastards. Some patheticly old while others are still grand. I can take them if I want but I dunno what to do with them, there is one gigantic Gateway PC so I might take that and harvest it's case.

fluppet

Duggy747 wrote:

I dunno what to do with them

There are plenty of people on the sites I mentioned above (or one of Freecycle's other Irish branches if you're not in Dublin) who'd love to take them.

David Michael

My Gateway P700 is still in use as a uTorrent'ing device.

MooseJam

i sell em on adverts.ie, usually get a new one every 1 to 2 years

zuutroy

We in the semiconducting business designs the transistors to last 10 years!.....You sayin 40% of my work is making em reliable for their time spent in a skip!

I've had my PC for fifteen years now, in that time it's only had three new motherboards, five hard disks, two cases, four CD/DVD drives & three PSU's.

Still the same floppy though

philstar

themole wrote:

When a pc is 6 years old it rarely still works. So most people would just dump them, or put them in the shed to forget about.

oh yeah??....well my ibm thinkpad is 8 years old and workin like new, can even play relevantly new games as well.

As long as you look after them, defrag regularly and keep them virus free, theres no reason why yr pc can't be used for 10 years +

so there:p

One Cold Hand

I bury mine at the computer cemetery.

I wish I had a funny link or picture for this, but I don't!

Alter-Ego

Theres a big pile of them in the garage. All not working AFAIK.

chamlis

Butchered a few of them together to make The Monster™


It's actually pretty sh!t -_-

gandalf

Recycle Park in Ballyogan.

Black Swan

Just got rid of one in February in a swap meet. Of course, I reformatted the hard drive after doing a disk wash to remove all data before selling it.

David Michael

Blue_Lagoon wrote:

Just got rid of one in February in a swap meet. Of course, I reformatted the hard drive after doing a disk wash to remove all data before selling it.

What is a disk wash? I can guess but more detail?

DublinWriter

A couple of years ago I approached several ex-clients and employers for 'old' PC's that I could refurbish and donate to various charities.

The upshot was that my spare room turned into a mini-workshop as I got in about 40 desktops and 30 laptops that I reformatted and gave to local schools and various charities such as Fr.Peter McVery's Home-Alone, the Salvation Army, AA and various Animal rescue charities.

These days it's harder to get the corporate sector to donate old PC's as they are more aware of security implications. There are also licensing implications if you are installing non open-source/freeware OSes and applications.

byte

dame wrote:

Does the producer's recycling fund apply to computers like it does to fridges and toasters and things? If it does, I'd return my old one when buying the new one, and get a bit of money back for it.

I don't think PRF's apply to computer items.

GhostInTheRuins

A lot of people throw out fairly good computers just because they can't get them working. About a month ago I went to the recycling centre with my mam and I wandered into the shed where all the electral stuff is dumped. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a laptop sitting there ready to be destroyed. "What the hell" I said, and took it with me . Took it home and had a look at it, perfect condition except the hard drive was damaged. Replaced the hard drive and it works perfectly, best bit of all though is that it's just over a year old!

Not bad, not bad at all

David Michael

David Michael wrote:

What is a disk wash? I can guess but more detail?

You overwrite the data to prevent it being recovered using undelete tools.
Google for disk security erasing applications.

repeat the erase several times to be sure it can't be recovered

skyhighflyer

I find it hard to believe the poster whose 1997 PC runs XP properly :eek:

I just find that they tend to get too slow / fooked at around 5 years old. I have a 486 and a P166 in the attic that work grand but sure what good could they be to anyone, even the local school?

weeder

i have an old powermac still on the go after 11 years!

TerrorFirmer

philstar wrote:

oh yeah??....well my ibm thinkpad is 8 years old and workin like new, can even play relevantly new games as well.

As long as you look after them, defrag regularly and keep them virus free, theres no reason why yr pc can't be used for 10 years +

so there:p

Yes sure, tell yourself that. Any eight year old laptop would struggle to play games released six years ago, let alone 'new' ones.

Anyway, there's no reason why a machine should be useless after 6 years. First of all, I have a computer in my sisters room that is perfect for web browsing, processing, runs older but still immensely popular games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament fine on high settings, and it's almost 8 years old. Even older then that, machines are perfect for light processing, printing, that sort of thing.

I usually keep mine, build various computers out of parts, or just give them away. It is shocking however, the amount of people that think they 'need' a new pc when all they need is more memory, or a new hard disk, etc, and then just dump their relatively perfect machines in the bin.

ciano1

i plant them in the back garden and hope a computer tree will grow

fluppet

skyhighflyer wrote:

I find it hard to believe the poster whose 1997 PC runs XP properly

Indeed it does! I'm using it to write this message right now. You just turn-off all the silly swooshy effects and don't install too many programs that run continuously in the background. I must admit it has had a little bit of upgrading, but the only upgrade done that would have any impact on performance is a bit more RAM.

D.T Jesus wrote:

I went to the recycling centre... I saw a laptop... and took it with me

Are you allowed to do that? I'd gladly pick-up some stuff from there, but I would have thought it was against the rules.

fluppet

Just because your computer runs Windows a bit too slowly for your liking doesn't mean you have to get a new one either. If you are confident with computers and you have some spare time, I strongly recommend DSL - you'll be amazed how fast your computer runs.

fluppet

fluppet wrote:

Just because your computer runs Windows a bit too slowly for your liking doesn't mean you have to get a new one either. If you are confident with computers and you have some spare time, I strongly recommend DSL - you'll be amazed how fast your computer runs.

Yes, an old computer running small OS & Apps can be as fast if not faster than a newer model running the latest bloatware and struggling with lack of memory etc.

Don't expect an old PC to run newer bloatware...

jester77

HavoK wrote:

Yes sure, tell yourself that. Any eight year old laptop would struggle to play games released six years ago, let alone 'new' ones.

Anyway, there's no reason why a machine should be useless after 6 years. First of all, I have a computer in my sisters room that is perfect for web browsing, processing, runs older but still immensely popular games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament fine on high settings, and it's almost 8 years old. Even older then that, machines are perfect for light processing, printing, that sort of thing.

I usually keep mine, build various computers out of parts, or just give them away. It is shocking however, the amount of people that think they 'need' a new pc when all they need is more memory, or a new hard disk, etc, and then just dump their relatively perfect machines in the bin.

I also have an 8 year old laptop, it's a Sony Vaio. Works fine, even have XP on it. Granted it's too slow to do anything intensive but I have it sitting in a corner of the house on the network with utorrent running 24/7. Never had a problem with it and it's took some big knocks back in the day!

GhostInTheRuins

fluppet wrote:

Are you allowed to do that? I'd gladly pick-up some stuff from there, but I would have thought it was against the rules.

I have no idea to tell the truth, there was nobody around and nobody stopped me. The way I see it is I was just doing my bit to save the planet

TerrorFirmer

jester77 wrote:

I also have an 8 year old laptop, it's a Sony Vaio. Works fine, even have XP on it. Granted it's too slow to do anything intensive but I have it sitting in a corner of the house on the network with utorrent running 24/7. Never had a problem with it and it's took some big knocks back in the day!

I don't doubt you. What I did doubt, or rather knew to be an outright lie for the sake of it, was a claim that an 8 year old laptop can run 'relatively new' games.

StephenC_IRL

I'll recycle any apple or sun computers for free im just a good person like that,

but normally people give them away on places like www.jumbletown.ie

StephenC_IRL

D.T. Jesus wrote:

I have no idea to tell the truth, there was nobody around and nobody stopped me. The way I see it is I was just doing my bit to save the planet

I do it all the time even at the WEEE centre (not going to say which one, but the guy there is a legend) your not supposed to take it because the rules are once its in there its declared end of life and electrically unsafe, so your not supposed to take it, but fair play

JackKelly

Look at my sig!

StephenC_IRL

Timay, are you associted with CAMARA and if i was to make a donation of a monotary or large scale pc donation could some apple computers go missing from the premesis ??

Mrs. MacGyver

I've a second hand compaq laptop since 1999 and tis going grand also have an old Amstrad from 1980 something that i still play retro games on. I hoard things and never give them away! Todays junk are tomorrows antiques!.

Holsten

Mine is gathering dust beside the new one, I'll eventually get round to hooking it back up and using it for storage, but procrastination is fun.

JC 2K3

Mossy Monk wrote:

Upgrade.

QFT.

And it doesn't have to be expensive upgrades either.

I've had my PC for 7 years now, and it was built from spare second hand parts that were being thrown out in the first place. So essentially it was free.

It now runs XP at a decent speed and with no problems whatsoever. What have I upgraded?

RAM: It was 32MB originally, now it's like 320MB, great performance boost and RAM is dirt cheap.

Graphics card: Nothing major, just some old one to a GeForce one. Runs older games grand. I don't use my PC for games much though.

Hard Drives: I've probably gone through 3/4. I currently have a 10GB one and a 40GB one onboard and a 220GB external one.

Motherboard: Original one had a strange restarting fault whenever new RAM was installed. I replaced it with an identical spare motherboard. I got it free, but it'd be very cheap to buy.

That's all I think. It's a P3 by the way.

skyhighflyer wrote:

I just find that they tend to get too slow / fooked at around 5 years old. I have a 486 and a P166 in the attic that work grand but sure what good could they be to anyone, even the local school?

They don't "get too slow". They might seem slow in comparison to newer PCs, but they're still the same speed as when you got them. And anyway, noticing the difference between slow and fast PCs is getting harder and harder as they get faster and faster, for example:

A PC from 1995 opens an app in 10 seconds, one from 2000 opens it in 2 seconds - you'll notice the difference in speed.

A PC from 2000 opens an app in 2 seconds, one from 2005 opens it in 2/5 of a second - you'll notice the difference, but not as much.

A PC from 2005 opens an app in 2/5 of a second, one from 2010 opens it in 2/25 of a second - will you notice the difference? Probably not.

For most PC functions besides games, there are no further advancements that can really make any worthwhile difference to their performance. Buying top-spec models is a bit of a waste of money for the non-gamer IMO. A well maintained PC from the early 00s with a few minor uprgrades is more than adequate for the average user.

GhostInTheRuins

StephenC_IRL wrote:

I do it all the time even at the WEEE centre (not going to say which one, but the guy there is a legend) your not supposed to take it because the rules are once its in there its declared end of life and electrically unsafe, so your not supposed to take it, but fair play

Oops :cool:

StephenC_IRL

D.T. Jesus wrote:

Oops :cool:

ahh fair play to you though, once you understand the risks and that if it explodes you cant sue them your ok, just one piece of advise, if this is a regular occurence, dont sell aything you pick up , the serial numbers of stuff is logged now and if the same thing comes back twice somebodys gonna be in trouble

GhostInTheRuins

StephenC_IRL wrote:

ahh fair play to you though, once you understand the risks and that if it explodes you cant sue them your ok, just one piece of advise, if this is a regular occurence, dont sell aything you pick up , the serial numbers of stuff is logged now and if the same thing comes back twice somebodys gonna be in trouble

Haha, don't worry about that. Thats the only time I've done it and I don't plan on making a living out of selling stuff thats been dumped . I was just totally shocked at the stuff that people dump out. Whoever had the laptop just dumped it because they couldn't get it working, if you looked at it you'd swear it was new.