If you had a computer that was no long needed or died, etc. What would you do with it or to it?

And taking it to staples, office max, or donating it, etc. is not what they want to do from what I can tell.

Ideas on what to do? Thanks

E waste recycler.

do not have one of those.

Donate it to a church, or a charitable organization. Even if it's dead, sometimes it's only one or two things that need replacing.

No matter what you do with it first thing to do is to either remove the hard drive or run a data wiper like DBAN - https://dban.org/ on the drive.

After removing the hard drives from a couple of old PCs, it only took a couple days before I freecycled them. Hobbyists tend to cannibalize them for various projects.

Wipe and destroy the hard drive and throw it away.

.223 55gr ball will punch nice holes in a dual-platter hard drive. .45ACP ball will not. After that: Tannerite.

I put em out on the curb on heavy trash day.
They are gone before usually in a couple of hours.

I wipe and remove the hard drives, then use them as targets, and then throw away the remnants.

The rest of the computer gets taken to the county electronic/household waste recycling center. (They collect things like broken TVs and computers, appliances, tires, paint, and used oil.)

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
If you had a computer that was no long needed or died, etc. What would you do with it or to it?

And taking it to staples, office max, or donating it, etc. is not what they want to do from what I can tell.

Ideas on what to do? Thanks

They don’t want to donate or recycle it?
So....put legs on it and make it a nightstand? Door stop? Wheel chock?

I end up w/several every year. I steal the magnets from the hard drives, scavenge the easy aluminum, and E-Waste the rest.

We have a recycling center nearby that takes computers. I have several hard drives I’ve repurposed as external storage. Almost exclusively, all of them had personal information information on them. Remove the hard drive and pound it into some other shape and donate the rest if it’s a new enough machine. If it’s old, recycle it.

As have others here, I disposed of seversl computers, monitors, TV by taking them to an electronics recycler. I removed the hard drives, of course. You may have to pay to have a monitor recycled.

Put it in a Fed-X box and leave it on your door step.

quote:

Originally posted by RGRacing:
Put it in a Fed-X box and leave it on your door step.

No doubt meant in jest, but I bet it'd work!

Seriously, all the above suggestions are good. Remove and destroy the hard drive(s) and donate or recycle the rest.

Someone "asks" me to deal with something they can't or do not want to deal with, and puts a bunch of contingencies that limit my ability to "help" them on top of the "request"; I, politely, decline.

Are you near a Best Buy?

According to their web site, they recycle computers (and other electronics) for no fee.

As others have stated, remove the hard drive.

List here

Best Buy recycles electronics. I dropped a TV with them not long ago

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:
.223 55gr ball will punch nice holes in a dual-platter hard drive. .45ACP ball will not. After that: Tannerite.

357sig will.

Wipe the hard drive with DBAN or similar. You call also pull the hard drive, and destroy the platters.

Formatting or "deleting" the files off the computer is not sufficient.

You can then take it to hazardous waste disposal of e waste recycling.