Windows 7: What do you do with your old hardware?

My workroom is almost at the point where I need to climb over a mountain of old tower cases, laptops, printers, hubs etc. just to sit at my desk! There's a mixture of P3, P4, AMD and server boxes lying around... not to mention all the old video cards, cpu's and RAM!

With the economy being the way it is and a baby on the way, I'm hoping to turn my pile of assorted circuitries into a pile of cash. I'm not really sure at this stage if I should strip them for parts and sell the parts individually on some online auction site, or try and build a heap of working computers to sell.

The idea of maybe installing a free, easy to use operating system loaded with kids educational software is appealing to me at the moment, and I'm thinking of trying out QIMO Linux. It should make for a cheap kids' first computer if it works out...



What would you guys do?

What do you do with your old computer parts and systems?

As soon as i got enough bits for a system i put it all together and give it away to someone that wants a spare for their kids to surf the net or something.

If you break it up for ebay or similar your gonna be selling high quantity of low priced packages, might be easier to make a few systems and flog them, problem is the OS, most people are gonna want windows

I had this problem when i was moving and i didn't want to move a massive collection of unused computers into my new house. i stripped some of them and added compatible parts to the ones i left running and gave them more specific tasks, like one allows me to control the lights and thermostat to my home while im away. i'd assume you have old xp keys so you may just want to make some of the old machines run a little better and install xp, you won't get much for them but it's much easier to sell then individual parts.

I only have one old system....tower, monitor, keyboard. At this point i am keeping it around for emergencies in case this machine is struck by lightning(or my stupidity). The old one will let me go online, just much slower than this one.

I've tried giving away old hardware, and no one would take it.

you shouldn't throw away electronics, it's very bad for the environment.

lol, I started laughing when I saw the title....

I have it all over the place, some in storage, some in garage, some in closet, some in a drawer always waiting to piece it together for something. I was going to put one together for my son, but instead built it from new parts, lol.

I have tried parting and selling online but like pauly stated "gonna be selling high quantity of low priced packages", I would also put some together and give em away to the needy.

Hard drives on the other hand, I keep locked up, when I find a way to zero them out, then I'll get rid of them...lol

If I don't know someone that can use it as an upgrade or needs it I sell it.

The wife and I have a total of 6 computers scattered around the house, set up in various rooms already. 2 X laptops, HTPC, testbench, media server and work pc ..... that's not including iPaq's and Windows Mobile devices!
I'm not hoarding them... I just can't bear to throw them out! LOL

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