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Old Computers

Entry 914, on 2008-12-20 at 22:08:25 (Rating 1, Computers)

Today I decided to clean out a bit of the extra stuff sitting around in my basement so I started looking around for anything I hadn't used for a few years. Of course, I had a lot of old computers and monitors to get rid of and, after a while, there was about half a trailer load to dispose of.

So I threw the trailer load of junk, including the old hardware, into the "pit" (I had stripped out all the useful bits and they weren't worth recycling) and a large loader just pushed them into the land fill. Well it didn't push all of them because some it ran over the top of and crushed instantly! I felt really bad at the time that once excellent hardware had met such an ignoble end.

I do find new owners for as many old machines as I can but I find anything less than an iMac G3 is now almost useless. Yesterday I set up an old iMac with Mac OS 9 so that a friend's grandchildren could play some old games while they were visiting, and I am currently working on a G4 PowerMac for another friend, plus I'm in the middle of upgrading my web server form a single processor G4 to a dual processor model. All of these machines are effectively worth nothing but they can still be used for certain purposes.

I even have an older PC laptop which I want to use for something. I was thinking of installing Linux on it because I really just can't see myself using Windows, even on an older machine or just for experimental purposes.

One of the machines I threw out probably cost around NZ$6000 when it was new but now it has been crushed by a ten ton loader! I do keep as many old machines as I can but there are only a certain number I can find homes for and I only have a certain amount of space to store them.

You can probably tell from what I said above that I feel a bit guilty about having these fine machines euthanised but hopefully by talking about it here I'll get over it without too many permanent psychological issues!

Comment 1 (1876) by Josh on 2009-01-22 at 09:14:51:

I understand where you're coming from with this one, i don't understand peoples need to have the latest technology every year when all they do is sit there and browse youtube and send emails and the reason they usually do this is because they're "slow" - slow because they're so full of malware and crap inside windows a good clean out and they're back performing fine again. I still use a P4 for browsing/email its perfect for the job - upgraded it from the stingy 512mb of ram it came with to 2gig and a new hdd and it hasn't let me down in 6-7 years!

Comment 2 (1877) by OJB on 2009-01-22 at 18:02:25:

Obviously it depends on what you plan to use the computer for. Gaming always seems to require plenty of speed, sometimes new peripherals needs a new OS which needs new hardware (Apple is bad for that). I do find homes for a lot of older Macs so I don't feel too bad about throwing some really old hardware out.

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