What is Digg?31 Comments
- STDOUBT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Reminds me of http://freegeek.org/
Good business to get into. Here in Portland OR,
Several FreeGeek "staff" make a living recycling
PCs and educating the public about Linux.
FreeGeek's a 501(c)(3) not for profit community organization.
Every capitol city should have a FreeGeek - Saintlink, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9A good way to reduce the quanity of junk that goes in landfills is to stop buying only stop-gap upgrades. Some people have to have the latest and greatest and a good portion of their so-called "old" hardware ends up in the trash. Likewise, the hardware makers thrive on going from 2.0ghz to 2.1ghz instead of 2.0ghz to 2.5ghz. This inch by inch game isn't good for all the landfills out there.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I usually only upgrade about once every three years. I got a 1Ghz AMD laptop 3 years ago and I recently purchased a 2Ghz Pentium M tablet. i didn't play advanced games on the AMD laptop, but for Starcraft and Guild Wars it was fine. Even when I ran SSIS 2005 beta on it, it ran well. The only time it felt really slow was when I was beta testing Vista lol :P...seriously.
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8give them to people? make clusters?
- aximbigfan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6they have a store near me. i bought an almost new 2.2ghz p4 computer for $50...
chris - MAnt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Here is a year old article that has an interesting take on recycling PCs and electronics.
http://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/news.asp?ID=8112
"U.S. Geological Survey estimates that one metric ton of computer circuit boards contains between 40 and 800 times the concentration of gold contained in gold ore." - stevex0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Damn it wish I could get get just 1mil for my computer recycling organization. I suppose selling computers for $50 and giving them away for free for volunteer time isn't enough of a sustainable business plan. I guess I'll just have to be content knowing that they are not going straight to a landfill.
freegeekchicago.org - captjc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I am still a fan of recycling PC's to make PC Board Products (eg. Mobo Clipboard or notebook, RAM Bookmarks, Pentium Paperweights, IC Cuff-links, and Sound-card Money-clip / Pocketknife to name a few)
Then again, I am the kind of person that also makes wallets and stuff out of Duct tape. - Burner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Heck yes! I volunteer there, free geek that is. A lot of people don't have computers and you'd be surprised how much a 233 pentium running linux can change someones life.
- gl00pp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How would one go about recycling 'puters? and make a living at it?
I am guessing you would need to service large companies and universities?
Take away their unwanted PCs?
and re-sell them?
i want a new job! - Badaudio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3please get off digg
- bat-21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Not anymore. Because of China and India's dramatic economic growth, the prices of raw materials have really jumped this year.
- dwnwrd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I work for a medium-size company that recycles PCs, and we do pretty well at it. In the mostly-new electronics recycling world, a mid-size company is about 50 employees, 2 locations, and $5-10M revenues. $50M is a huge cash infusion for any recycler, even the huge ones like United and Redemtech. Yes, you need to target Fortune 500/1000 companies and large institutions that have the deep pockets and need to keep their public image up. You can also service the general public, but that's not profitable anywhere but California, where the state pays up to $50 per unit to the recycler.
- Dred, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2well alot of people can't afford computers. so you donate your old computer to someone in need of one, such as a kid that need it just to do homework or studies. In the community I live in I use it as an outreach from the local church. I bring kids and there parents in on week nights teach them how to build computers and work on them. If enough people donate there old computers to me I give them to the kids. So they benefit from these donations, they don't care if it is the latest and greatest they are just glad they have one.
- BillyG123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I saw on Discovery a few weeks ago a story on electronic parts recycling and they said it is cheaper to extract the gold from these parts than it is to extract it from the ground, lb. per lb.
Check it out if you get the chance. (I see now Mant above beat me to it) - derkles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Use them as thin-clients.
- phantom113, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1In lancaster PA there's a similar thing although it's not called free geek. They repair computers as well for an extremely price, and then buy old computers off people with that money to recycle/fix. The people that work there are volunteers so they don't have to pay the employees. Again a non-profit organization. Neat idea.
- doppler00, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2What if the computers are Pentium II's or even Pentiums? There are still millions of these machines around. What good is a cluster of 1,000 antiquated machines that gulp electricity when one modern machine fits the bill?
- STDOUBT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1d'oh
s/capitol/major - STDOUBT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't know...
That's pretty intelligent stuff compared to
other posts I've seen here.
If you squint it kinda looks like Sanskrit -pretty! - PapaSmurf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ive had this comp since 98, same evrything, havnt gotten another one. As for laptop and word processing I still use my IBM thinkpad from 94 or maybe its earlier I cant remember I was a kid, yes it runs windows 5.1 and yes this one runs windows 98, what it do. Im agreeing with Saintlink, he/she made a good point.
- webphreak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Badaudio Yeah but maybe getting off life would be a good idea for him too
- scantling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i do this and just getting started
i get computers for nothing and refurb them
everything else is stripped and trashed
free geek.org is cool i'm contacting them for info to start my own - WarN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Agreed. I work in health care, where software vendors are very particular about what hardware you buy. I tried to explain to them about using thin clients instead of PC's. I was originally told that I wouldn't be able to do it. After a month or two of arguing with them, I finally convinced them that I could do it, and that my maintains time would go down greatly!
When I got administration to buy into the idea, it was smooth sailing. I currently have 70 Thin Clients and I am the only IT person on staff. It is much nicer to be able to shadow a session from my bedroom when a nurse calls at 2am with a problem...and I have yet to replace a single one, meaning less junk to dispose of! - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1$50M? VCs must be desperate... Gotta think of something...
- BiggusCattus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0For me, the issue here is that most IT shops focus on maintenance rather than research and development. About 80% percent of the typical IT budget is maintenance. Many IT managers focus on these dollars because they are easy to get and justify. Efficiency is terrifying - mention a thin client terminal that has a 12 year lifespan and you will be working in the boiler room the rest of your career. There's a lot of social factors at work here - job security, budgets, power. These are the things that make Newmarket possible.
- howeird, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1just up-grade your old PC. I have a Dell optiflex GX1 works great. Have no idea how old it is.
- JayRod, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1So they will re-sell that old hard drive full with porn spyware, worms and trojans.
- shailendra, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0sdfg sdgfsdg sdfgsdfg sfd gsf sdfgsdfg sdfg sdfg dgsd sdfg
- shailendra, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0gfhd hg dgfh dhgf dgfh fgjfghj fghj fhgjfghj fgjhfgjfgjhfhg jfghj fgjh fgh fghj fjfghjf fghj fghjdf fh dfghdfghdfghdfgh dfghd hgdfgh dfghdfghdfhdf dfghdfh dfh dhfd hgdhdfgh dgfh dfgh dhgdfh dgfhfgh dhdfh f
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1haven't you seen penn and teller:*****
recycling is *****
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is