[Chester LUG] What do you guys do with old hardware

[Stuart Burns]

Hi Les,

Yeah, The thing as a group as sounds good because I have tried before to try
and get the local council involved, wrote a nice letter to the local council
and MP to see if a) they could help or b) donate to a worthy cause. It was a
big fat NO from both of them, but I really think it could be a good idea.
For example I know a lot of colleges are paying "scrap merchants" to take
away fully working P3 1GHz machines every term end when they get the new 3
GHz dual core machines etc

I'd be interested in doing it and if it works, it would save this company at
least a few hundred a year in "landfill fees" not that it would end up in
the landfill, if you get my meaning.

I mean, on top of all that kit, I have 3 17" crts that are going in the bin
so to speak, and its just wasteful ! And just think, if our 100 person
company has these machines kicking about a lot of others must have an even
bigger amount. ie Octel, Shell, all the financial service companies in
chester and the like (although I have no doubt that they have removal
mechanisms in place)

Only problem I forsee that would be a pain is when they try and install
"Need for speed 3" on the linux boxen ;)

Interesting thought though!

On 10/26/06, Les Pritchard <les.pritchard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Stuart,
>
> There's several things you can do with old kit like that.  As you say,
> they're not bin jobs yet - far from it.  There are charities that will take
> the boxes off your hands and pass them on to community projects.  I could
> see the laptops being particularly suited for that, but the server boxes
> would also work well as terminal servers.  What I sometimes do is just pass
> them on to local non-profit organisations I know of.  Perhaps this could be
> a worth while thing for the Chester LUG to consider doing - collecting kit
> like this and donate it to local causes....complete with Linux / BSD
> installed of course!!  That could bring publicity for Linux, Open Source and
> the Chester LUG as well as helping out these people.
>
> If your company would go for that - would anybody else be interested in
> doing this kind of thing?  If we share it between a few of us, I'm sure it
> wouldn't be too bad.
>
> I know several people on the list (me included!) and other friends
> wouldn't mind some of the kit to play with themselves...but I'm just trying
> to think of this from the good cause, Open Source style approach of
> benefiting the community as a whole.  (Plus the Techies Against Sleeping on
> the Sofa issue many face when bringing back "another box" ;-) )
>
> Thanks
>
> Les
>
> On 10/26/06, Stuart Burns < stuart.james.burns at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Seems a simple question really, but where I work I we PAY some person to
> > take away all our "old" machines.
> >
> > I currently have a few knocking round and it seems a pity for them to go
> > into landfill because at the end of the day they are still good machines,
> > but they have gotten bit rot etc and slowwwweeeed right down. Nothing a
> > format and a light windows manager wouldnt cure
> >
> > The specs of the machines that I *may* - subject to company approval be
> > getting rid of are:
> >
> > 4/5 Compaq Ipaqs, ranging from P2-450s to P3 800s with memory and hard
> > drives
> > 1 HP P3 450
> > 1 PowerEdge 800
> > 1 PowerEdge 450 with ~30 GB RAID array
> >
> > There may even be the following depending if our upgrade over the next
> > few weeks goes to plan
> > 1 Dual Xeon 1 GHz/1Gb RAM/19GB RAID 5 array 2u Rackmount
> > 1 PowerEdge 800
> > 1 PowerEdge 4300 450Mhz with ~30 GB RAID array with tape drive
> >
> > Problem that I have is, i use freecycle for most stuff, but unfortunatly
> > with the PCs you either get a) well intentioned newbs who doent understand
> > IT at all and feel they have a right to phone you up at 9pm because program
> > "coolgame.exe" doesnt work or b) people take the stuff I gave for free
> > (ie a few p3 machines, printers etc ) and sell them on ebay !
> >
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> > https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/chester
> >
> >
> >
>
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