What do you do with your 'old' computer? (Page 2): Sounds like a good plan for the use of your older computer. For what it is worth, my college classes have been switched to "cyber...

elliott937 Loc: St. Louis

Sounds like a good plan for the use of your older computer.

For what it is worth, my college classes have been switched to "cyber teacher" immediately. So beginning next Tuesday, 3/17, I'll be teaching my physics students from home. You won't be alone in cyber teaching.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

elliott937 wrote:

Sounds like a good plan for the use of your older computer.

For what it is worth, my college classes have been switched to "cyber teacher" immediately. So beginning next Tuesday, 3/17, I'll be teaching my physics students from home. You won't be alone in cyber teaching.

We got an e-mail from the University of Virginia that all students who can are being told to go home until further notice. Our daughter lives off campus in an apartment and has her car but she plans to take advantage of the on-line classes to fly home for a week or so to see us and her friends. She is a 2nd year Medical Student and I wonder about cyber classes for medical school???? I would not have been surprised to hear that she and the other students were being put into hazmat suits and working the hospital and clinics.

cdayton

I have 3 old PCs in my closet - too old to run modern versions of Windows so not much use to anyone. Someday, I’ll pull the hard drives and take the boxes to the dump (they have a special section for electronics).

home brewer Loc: Fort Wayne, Indiana

give it to young grand children who don't need the speed

gmw12 Loc: Indianapolis & Windsor/UK & Montreux/Switzerl

Use it as a controller for your IP alarm system.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I like to have at least two working computers. Old ones that I no longer use reside in the garage. I've used parts - switches, memory, drives, graphics card - from them when needed. I can also use the cases to build a new computer from scratch. I tend not to get rid of things.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

PixelStan77 wrote:

Donate it to not for profit or local school

They will not want your old 'junk'. It may work but as it won't run any up-to-date programs it is worthless. Recycle the parts.

JeffL Loc: New Jersey

TriX wrote:

Use it as a music, photo or video server for your home network.

That is exactly what I did. Using an old PC (MAC works as well), turned it into a PLEX server. Have Plex channel on ROKU and Plex player in all my devices. I can watch movies on any device on my home network or any location with WiFi.

cochese

Ebay

dbjazz Loc: Long Island, NY

I have always "wiped" the hard drive, which restores it to factory specs, and donated the computer (to church, school, club, community center, even a local small business, etc.). Your operating system should have an easy procedure for wiping the drive.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

dbjazz wrote:

I have always "wiped" the hard drive, which restores it to factory specs, and donated the computer (to church, school, club, community center, even a local small business, etc.). Your operating system should have an easy procedure for wiping the drive.

Formatting or partitioning a HD in Windows using the native tools won’t necessarily offer protection from a skilled hacker. You need an application that will write 0s to every single memory location such as Dban http://www.dban.org.

Jim Ermer

Go on line for Apple recycling or trade-in. I have recycled old non working MacBook.They send an email with bar code for USPS to scan.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

dbjazz wrote:

I have always "wiped" the hard drive, which restores it to factory specs, and donated the computer (to church, school, club, community center, even a local small business, etc.). Your operating system should have an easy procedure for wiping the drive.

Don’t kid yourself...I have bought “used” hard drives over the years that had been “wiped”, but often I was able to examine the drives using freely available tools that recovered data and programs from the “wiped” drives.

“Wiping” erases the drives, but depending on how you wipe it, often just deletes the file allocation table, not touching the actual files left on the disk.

Also, “factory specs” is more than just deleting files....

To be sure you need to delete all files and overwrite all locations on the disk with data, usually several times to be assured that all your information is not recoverable.

schaut

The REALLY OLD computers i have, i recycle. If you donate one of the OLD ones, whoever you donate it to may see it as an ANTIQUE and recycle it anyway! I have an older acer notebook that i don't use for the internet, but it comes in handy if i want to repair something on one of my Macbook Pros. I can put the instructions up on the Acer and keep it in front of me while i do the repair! Since it IS capable of browsing the net, i can look for answers i have during the repairs and go back to my original instructions to continue. Depends on what you do. I have another older Macbook Pro that i use exclusively streaming video viewing on my Samsung big screen TV. Lots of good suggestions here! Hope this helps!

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

For me personally, I use my older systems as servers. When I purchase a new iMac, my old one will be a second monitor.
--Bob

elliott937 wrote:

I'm enjoying my one year old iMac. But here's my question. I have an iMac, G-5 to be specific, from 2005. It still works perfectly with the software on it. Newest software, (to the best of my knowledge) won't work on it.

Since it is fully operational, I don't know what best to do with you. That is why I thought I'd ask you all what functions you might have found for your older computers.

I thank you in advance for your ideas.

Bill