XP boxes

[Martyn]

What are you doing with XP towers you are getting along the way? Scrapping, Ebaying, stripping down? I've probably got 8 or so of them all with licences attached and I need some room.

 

[NYJimbo]

Yank the ram, destroy the HD and put them out at the curb.

 

[katz]

I still have people that want them (believe it or not). They sell on craigslist for maybe up to $50. In many states, we can't put them at the curb for recycling.

 

[NYJimbo]

In many states, we can't put them at the curb for recycling.

We will have that problem starting next year. I think there could be some money in becoming a drop off point for towers and desktops. Either money from the customer or money from the recycler.

 

[SilverLeaf]

Fortunately my county has an electronics recycling program. Every so often, I just load up the car and take them down to the recycling center.

Of course, I always try to re-purpose whatever I can first.

 

[Blues]

There are a fair number of recycling places that basically buy the scrap metals from old computers and hard drives some even take out and refurbish some of it. In general they just want the metal if you want to become a local drop point for people you can get a few cents to the pound for the metal and you can pick up some money on the other end by charging for pick ups and when doing on site work charge a disposal fee to take their old equipment with you. Watch out for CRTs, yes some people still have them, as most places charge for them since they are considered hazardous waste is many areas.

 

[HubCityPC]

Slap a Linux distro on them and donate them to someone in need. Recipient covers the shipping expenses.

As promoted on The Techie Geek Podcast... http://freelinuxbox.org/

 

[Gary Rockliff]

I have been doing a secure wipe on the drives and recycling them. I have a scrap metal guy that takes them off me for free.

 

[lan101]

I usually hang on to 1 or 2 of them. Every once in a while I get someone with a complete clunker like with win 98/me or some really ancient xp machine. Since their machine isn't worth anything, I can sell them something if they have very little money to spend. I use my own discretion with who I offer it to. If it sounds like I could be headed for trouble, I usually just avoid offering anything.

 

[gikstar]

Providing to the needs of others...

We do several things...
I search Craigslist in the Wanted section for 'computer' to see who I can bless with a useable computer. I have found over the past 3 months two local non-profits looking for computers. We setup a 'sober-living' environment with 5 computer systems and a PFSense (found a HP laser printer on Craigslist for $25 and donated that also).
The other non-profit provides vocational training for the disabled and we updated 3 of their systems (running Intel P-3 computers with 128mbs of ram) and donated 3 systems for their clients.

We add more network cards and use them as a content filter (PFSense).

We recycle what I can't use to a local recycler who I also been able to get parts from for my non-profit donations, like a 16 or 8 port switch.

We have a military base in this town and when an enlisted man brings in a computer and I can bless them with some of my extra ram that I've gotten free, then I do that.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We'd snag the RAM, destroy the hard drive, remove any peripheral cards that might be useful (like decent video cards or NICs), perhaps save the power supply if it was a decent one, and then after we built up a pile of them that got too big....one of us would fill the back of our truck and haul them to the metal scrap yard (just 1x exit up the highway...so a 10 minute drive). Which would give us about 100 bucks for about 20 of them.

Last week I got about a dozen newer ones together including a couple of old servers, wiped the drives with RoadKill, and gave them to a buddy that teaches shop at a tech school. They have a computer class there that he also helps teach, and he likes having lots of different computers 'n old servers for the students to learn on.

 

[SAG]

My client's HIPAA policies are to have the hard drives destroyed. After that, there's not much use for the old P4 boxes I'm yanking out of production. So I set them out for the scrappers. I figure those guys need to earn a living too. If it's from a non healthcare client, and a decent system, I'll DBAN, reinstall, and donate.

 

[hmig89]

are they no good to use as bench pcs?

 

[Martyn]

are they no good to use as bench pcs?

I've got plenty of bench machines

 

[hmig89]

sell them

I've got plenty of bench machines

I was thinking maybe you can sell them on here for any techs starting out.

 

[NYJimbo]

are they no good to use as bench pcs?

Well, how many machines do we really need ?

 

[codegreen]

I was thinking maybe you can sell them on here for any techs starting out.

For boxes of that age, it wouldn't be worth paying the shipping even if you got the machine for free. For a tech starting up on a shoestring, it would be better to check their local Craigslist or Freecycle for a cheap/free bench machine. Once you get going, you'll get more old desktops than you know what to do with. Hence this thread.

 

[brandonkick]

The local shop in town takes this stuff to the flea market and makes a killing.


He gets on average $100 per computer and $50 (15") $70 (17") and $100 (21") for monitors that were given to him. He has to fix some of the computers and monitors but a morning spent sitting at the flea market in a lawn chair can net him upwards of $1000. These machines are often pretty old, but the people buying really either don't know any better or really don't care as they are getting a machine for $100.

 

[Mindfulness]

Well, how many machines do we really need ?

We need 16 on a daily basis. It is just the perfect amount for my employee and I.

We have 6 laptops which we use for our 12 bench stations. We have one laptop for for each two stations. These laptops are used for documentation and managing the workflow of the computers we're working on.

We have 4 identical computers which are a combination workstation and backup server. They each have 4 harddrives, 7TBs total. One 2X2tb raid 1 array for complete backup images of client computers . A 2tb drive we use for the data we extract from the complete backup images.(Before we format a clients computer we have their data on three separate drives.) We have a 1tb drive used for the OS.

For data recovery services we have 2 dedicated machines. One linux computer we use for making hard drive images and a mac mini we use for recovering HFS+ file systems. We will be adding one to two more data recovery machines for some new dedicated data recovery hardware we're investing in.

We have a single server that is in the very slow process of being set up for WDS for OS deployment(still using install discs) . This project is coming along very slow. Hopefully someday it will get finished.

We have an hd testing computer which is just a simple computer not in a case. We have one laptop we use for service calls and one laptop we use to check clients in and out which runs quickbooks.

We could get by with less computers, but our productivity would go down. Computers are much cheaper and easier to manage than extra labor(people)

 

[carlitos31]

I sell them

I just got 60 dell optiplex 745's, XP PRO coa sticker attached, so selling some with Xp, and refurbishing some of them with 7 ( Microsoft refurbished program)
I sell them for $100-$200 just the tower, depending on hard drive size and memory, I also have flat screens
My cost: $20 for tower and screen.
There are people out there that are running P3s, low end P4s, with 122-512 MB ram, so getting into a core 2 duo with 2 to 4 GB of ram is a super huge upgrade