Don’t Throw Out That Old PC – Elf Knows It [ARCHIVED]

Something that has always bothered me is people throwing away their old PC’s, I see it all the time, “I bought a computer 2 years ago, It was starting to go slow and laggy, so I dumped it and got this new one”, Doesn’t that line just make your teeth hurt and your toes cringe? It does for me!, Any time I can stop this happening I do, if a friend or relative is throwing away an old computer, I’ll take it off their hands and refurbish it, they make great servers! I have often ended up with P4’s and even core 2 duo machines, that where going to end up in the skip if I didn’t take them!

Back to when I said they make great servers…All the old PC’s from my own home and friends/relatives have provided me with the perfect server set-up!, I have a server room full with a cluster of old PC’s running as web/mail/DNS/Proxy servers….you name it!, All free! And they’re not bad machines, Oldest one is a Pentium 3. In fact it’s that server set-up that runs this site, and all my other ones.

What can you do with your old PC’s?

• Talk to someone you know who knows their way around a computer, Usually a simple re-install of your OS will have it working like new
• If you have children, use it for their education, Install teaching software to help them with their schoolwork
• Ask around!, Call into some local schools and see if they would like to take it off your hands, I’m sure they would be happy to
• Do what I, and many other people have done, Make your own web server from it
• Don’t throw it out!, Even if you can’t get rid of it, and you can’t think of any use for it, Store it away, I guarantee a use will pop up sooner than you think!
  

So do you throw out your old computers? If you do, how often do you usually renew them?
If you are using any old computers around the home, I’d love to hear what they have ended up doing!