What To Do With Old Laptops? 620
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently acquired a few old P2/P3 laptops. Most either work properly but are slow, or have various problems with power supplies and/or batteries. Attempting to sell them would probably earn less than the cost of shipping, so that's out of the question. I was hoping the Slashdot crowd could give me some ideas on what to do with these old computers. As somebody who already has ~10 computers lying around the house there is certainly no need for an additional computer to 'experiment' with, so I was hoping for some more creative suggestions."
GIve it away (Score:1, Insightful)
Donate (Score:5, Insightful)
Send them to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Give 'em away? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that relevant teachers at the local high school or something might be able to hook you up with the right kind of kids, and you maybe could get a tax deduction out of it, even if they required a tad bit of work on the power supplies or batteries I'm sure you'd still come out ahead, even if only morally.
Use them (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could ship a good one to me. I'll give it a very good home.
Myth Frontend (Score:5, Insightful)
Part them out... (Score:3, Insightful)
the "old computer" myth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Picture Frame (Score:5, Insightful)
Find some small computer shop and get them to donate the desktop machine in exchange for a plaque on the wall at the library (cheap advertising and tax deductible donation for them), set it up over a weekend, and claim the cost of the laptops and your time as a charitable donation when you do your own taxes.
Or, of course, you could make a bunch of ugly digital picture frames that consume way too much electricity.
Terminals (Score:4, Insightful)
At that point you've got a nice farm of small terminals with a big powerful server behind them. If you don't need this for yourself, consider donating the whole setup to a local school, church, or other organization that could use a low-maintenance multiuser computing environment.
Re:Kids (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Digital picture frame? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me get this out of the way (Score:2, Insightful)
About a month later I ask how the project is going and they just say either 1) They bought a monitor, or 2) Admit it's a tough problem!
Costa Rica (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bonfire (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Use as a second (or third) monitor (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Picture Frame (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately (or fortunately) we've gotten to the point where technology, even free, is completely obsolete in 10-15 years. In a few years the cost of maintaining those systems as well as the extra electricity will probably make them more costly than a replacement. Still, if it's a few more good years, that's not bad.
What should be focused on more is safe disposal of computer equipment. We are very fast approaching the point of PC saturation. Almost everyone has a PC that wants one (in industrialized nations) and new models are very cheap. Very few people want the hassle of a PC after it's been handed down twice. (assume 5-7 years old.) Past that it's almost useless; the price, performance, size and features almost always win out for "buy new". You're going to likely be looking at 40+ million old PC/laptops disposed each year in the US alone, excluding businesses. (5 year lifespan, 2 in 3 people with a computer.)
Re:basic services (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bonfire (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bonfire (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mount it under the cabinet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Use them as a server / router (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bonfire (Score:2, Insightful)
My girlfriend, both of my parents, and the majority of my extended family are all teachers, so I think I have it on good authority that the correlation ratio between well-funded schools and highly achieving students is approaching one. There are some definite confounding variables in there, such as good administrators (which are easier to get with a higher budget, by the way) and parental involvement (incidentally, the most involved parents also tend to be the most educated and wealthiest, and make sure that their children are in better funded schools through both donations and municipal property taxes), but that doesn't mean funding has any less of an effect.
For example, my girlfriend is finishing her student teaching this semester and is looking for a job teaching art in the fall. She's taught at 2 different schools, one was in a small semi-rural town with fairly high family incomes and property taxes that is surrounded by colleges (including 2 of the Seven Sister schools), the other in a medium-sized city (4th largest in the state, but we don't have many large cities) with very low family incomes and junk-bond status. The former was "underfunded" and they could only run two ceramics classes each term for a student population of about 500 7th-12th graders, the latter wouldn't reimburse my girlfriend $2 for Styrofoam trays we bought from a grocery store so she could do an improvised printmaking unit because the students were getting sick of drawing on newsprint every day and those were the only supplies readily available in a school of a bit under 2000 7th and 8th graders. Guess which school has higher achieving students? Guess which spends more per student?