I’ve wondered this for a while now. I personally don’t upgrade until a machine fails or seems like it is about to fail, but aren’t there people who upgrade to a new laptop just to have the latest thing or because they want to run some non-free software with arbitrarily high hardware requirements? What happens to these still-working laptops that people replace? Not everyone is enough of a nerd to repurpose an old laptop as a file server or similar, so do people stuff them in a closet and forget about them, or do these machines become electronic waste? It seems like there must be a lot of these machines that could go to someone who could use one. Is there any sort of online or in-person place for donating laptops and other electronics? I know that recycling facilities exist in some places, and I know that there are secondhand stores, but what about somewhere to just give away machines that are no longer needed, or to sell them for only the cost of shipping? This seems important, but I’ve never seen such a thing. Does anyone here know of something like this?
(A bit of a ramble, but that’s how the words formed.)
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Well 16 year old laptops are still snappy Linux systems, so continue to use them or give them to other people for free who might have a use for them.
There’s a few non-profits that accept second hand laptops, such as Computers with Causes, or the ones on this list.
It’d also be possible sell the laptop on ebay for a penny + shipping, give it away to a local habitat for humanity, or offer it up for free on craigslist or offerup, or maybe ask around your local library if there’s an avenue to donate it to someone in need.
I ran an XMPP chat server from an old laptop for about a year (switched to a VPS for reliability though).
My friend buys and restores old ThinkPads and sends them to the Ukrainian military (Army SOS program)
But I still have several laptops and smartphones laying around. A long time ago, I had an idea of running a pseudo-datacenter with low-spec devices like that, but I think that would be more of a responsibility and money sink. My coworker suggested using those devices for additional calculation power (for lambdas?) on cloud services during spikes. But I haven’t really looked into that.
When I graduated my highschool let me keep my laptop. I still have it, and it’s got the shittiest specs ever. But it is capable of:
- Editing my character sheets
- Displaying battlemaps to the DnD table screen
That’s all I ever use it for, but it does it job well if I ignore that it no longer has a battery1, and that the screen no longer fully supports itself. I’ve been running linux on it since forever, and it just works.
Eventually, I’ll probably turn it into a simple static website or something. But that will only happen if it stops being useful for DnD because it disintegrates or something.
- It frequently gets shut down by people accidentally unplugging it/tripping over the cable, but oh well
The following ideas are not exactly what you ask for, but maybe they are worth considering?
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I don’t know what operating system you use, but for me old computers is how I got into linux. Linux Mint is very easy to install and to use, so it prolongs the life of perfectly good machines that are too old to be updated by proprietary software. Personally, I was doing most updates so that the laptop is as functional as possible for the longest time, and I was always doing the secuity ones. A few years back a friend gave me a 2006 laptop and it worked kind of ok with an old version of mint, it was just very slow. This one was given to another friend who didn’t have any.
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Depending on where you live there could be a makerspace, or a relevant collective that could use them, or parts of them.
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If they are not working anymore, you can use the parts to do crafts: jewleries, pins, fridge magnets, keychains, light fixture, wall decoration, photo frame, book holder are a few possibilities.
For makerspaces, old laptops and smartphones can run octoprint for remotely controlling 3D printers.
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So I know some folks who are the type to upgrade every couple years. Generally their old devices get sold on facebook marketplace or craigslist or they give them to me (usually when they’re fed up trying to sell them). I also find plenty of laptops dumped, still working, into corporate ewaste. Most of the ones I end up with get cleaned up, reinstalled, and handed off to a charity.
The better answer is yes there are places people use to give them away for free. Many towns and cities have free groups like Buy Nothing, Everything is Free, or Freecycle. If really recommend these for how easy they are to use. Some recycling centers have swap shops where working items are made available for free to town residents and volunteers can likely point you to relevant charities (such as refugee resettlement orgs or programs providing housing and items to help folks get back on their feet. Makerspaces/hackerspaces are also likely to take working machines, and there’s an outside chance some high school tech program will want them, though that will depend on their needs.
