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Ask HN: What do you do with your no-longer-in-use hardware?

by simon1573 on 12/28/20, 1:56 PM with 10 comments

• by speedgoose on 12/28/20, 4:42 PM

  It goes in the closet. After a few years it goes in the basement. There it stays for many years until it goes to the trash because it has no sentimental value anymore.

• by ksaj on 12/28/20, 11:25 PM

  I used to host geek yard sales that were all about unwanted tech devices and parts. The best thing is that they always turned out to be half swap-meet. A lot of trading went on because everyone has different, often opposing ideas of "unwanted" and "desirable."

  Of course 2020 and probably 2021 are not good years for that kind of activity, but by summer '22 I'm probably going to have no choice but to throw another sale.

• by giantg2 on 12/28/20, 3:10 PM

  Usually keep it for projects and keep my old phone as a spare if it still works (they usually just get very slow). I may end up recycling or giving old stuff away at some point, but that will be a while with my cycle times - my hardware tends to be quite old by the time it gets replaced. I think my desktop is 8 years old, laptop is 12, phone is the newest at 3 years old.

• by runjake on 12/28/20, 6:00 PM

  - With Apple stuff, I try to trade it in or dispose of it, due to the non-user-replaceable lithium ion batteries inside them.

  DO NOT KEEP UNUSED APPLE EQUIPMENT IN YOUR HOUSE.

  I used to keep my Apple gear around, but I had an old iPad in my dresser drawer and one day discovered that the battery had expanded to dangerous levels and was close to bursting.

  I don't feel like having my house burn down, so I get rid of old Apple stuff ASAP.

  - With PC gear, I tend to keep it around and use it for Linux stuff until the usefulness vs wattage no longer makes sense.

• by Aheinemann on 12/28/20, 6:28 PM

  have old pc hardware mostly.

  get an WD Green 120 GB SSD for about 20 - 25 €.

  Have a teenager / child come over with their parents and we build their first pc from the parts up.

  The kids install the windows license which came with the pc because school requires windows programs for homework.

  Kids are proud, most of them would not be able to get a computer of their own otherwise.

  computers are to slow for gaming, just useful for libre office... to bad...

  the kids will get an introduction to google and how to use youtube the right way (you either waste your life on youtube or you will get on a path to better grades - your choice) and a stern warning to stay off facebook, tik-tok and the ilk.

  hardware lasts until 8th - 9th grade usually, by then they have cheap smartphones of their own.

  one interesting note: i was a proud owner of an Commodore PC 10-III (msdos, 4.77 MHz, 640 KB RAM) and my own legal (!) copy of turbo pascal 4.0. i did a lot of things with that beast.

  None - Not even one - of the kids who could have visual studio community, lazarus, haskell, whatever on their machines will ever try their hands at programming (while having a virtual tutor on youtube !).

  They wouldn't even scratch (oh the pun indeed) the surface of cs...

• by lukaszkups on 12/28/20, 10:26 PM

  I put it into my no-longer-in-use hardware shelf. It tends to "light the darkest hour" for me (e.g. on unexpected failure of my new daily drivers)

• by AnimalMuppet on 12/28/20, 11:53 PM

  I take out the hard drive, punch three holes in it with a masonry drill bit, and then take it to Best Buy for hardware recycling.

• by tubularhells on 12/28/20, 2:24 PM

  Sell on the secondhand market, or if I don't need the money I post it to a charity who is a working with kids in poor households.

• by chaganated on 12/28/20, 2:22 PM

  Usually keep one as a spare. Anything over that is given away. Somebody always needs a computer.