Stupid Question... Can You Donate Old Computer Equipment?

[Lee]

Ive been cleaning out some of the cupboards in the office today ad we have a huge pile of old monitors, keyboards, mice, towers etc that we're never going to use again and rather than just throwing them out, i wondered if you folks knew of anywhere that takes old PC equipment for charitable donations or anything like that?

Otherwise, they're going to end up in the garbage tomorrow night.

Regards,

Lee

[gaybucks_chip]

It's pretty hard to get anyone to take old computer stuff these days, but you should check, 'cause in California it's illegal to discard computer equipment (towers or monitors) due to the toxic metals (lead, cadmium, etc) contained in them that are considered hazardous waste. I don't know about other states...

There are some recycling places here, some of which accept the stuff for free, others charge $5-25 per item to take them. You might check the yellow pages under "recycling" or "materials recovery." I had a ton of stuff and ended up taking it to one of the recycling/reclamation places that took it for free.

[longboardjim]

i destroy old computers and/or they usually outlive their usefulness , i would not trust "adult-content" to be completely erased from the hard-drives.

jim

[Lee]

Hmm okay guess i should call the refuge dump tomorrow then to find out.

Thanks guys

Regards,

Lee

[Bec]

Once or twice a year there's a couple of trailers that setup at one of the local fairgrounds that take old computer equipment here. Pretty sure it's run by a tech school of some kind. You might want to call a college or 2 in your area and see if they'd have some use for what you have. You can also look here for places near you that recycle used computer equipment:

TechSoup

[gaybucks_chip]

If you want to really erase your drive so that no one but the FBI (with very expensive and time consuming procedures) could recover the data, there are two freeware programs I know of,

http://www.summitcn.com/download.html

and

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/fil...scription.html

These work but prolly take a couple hours, depending on drive size.


If you want it so that *nobody* can retrieve it, you buy one of the professional upgrades and overwrite it 7 times... but it takes 12-15 hours per drive.

[Sana Chan]

I donate all my old computer parts to my dad. And the Tech. School here actually sells old computer stuff to people. Collectors and tech geeks love to have older equipement.

I remember being in a boyfriend's dorm when he and his friends brought over an old tower from like, the 70s or 80s. They were able to put the Penguin on it. The mouse was so old it required a metal mousepad with lines to move the mouse.

[Togm]

I have seen charities in the past that take them for Africa and some poorer asian countries. lets see if i can find their websites.

[IdolKnights]

If you drop them off at Goodwill at night they put them up for sale - but if you drop them off when they are open they will not take them.

It's kind of a forced sale on them if you do it at night.

Plus the money goes to help homeless people. Who would rather have the computer box.

[Bec]

Plus there's the ebay way -- you'd be amazed at the bulk sales of older equipment on an As Is basis.

[Paco]

Here, in Edmonton, we have a computer & electronics recycling depot. They will gladly accept any old system from a person, and if you happen to have a large volume, they will pay you (by weight or piece, I am not sure).

I am somewhat positive all provinces and states have something similar.
California offers: http://www.crc.org/

Just G00G "recycle computers" & "Edmonton" (your city/province/state) and bingo - you should be presented with many solutions.