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View Full Version : What is a computer worth?



Bruce Koch
12-26-2010, 4:35 PM
My son has Sony desktop that is 9 or 10 years old. Has pentium 4 1.5 ghz and 256 ram xp home on it. He had it when he was in college. Any idea what it's worth?

Michael MacDonald
12-26-2010, 4:57 PM
I would expect you would be hard pressed to even give it away if it is 10 years old. My business can barely get charities to look at our 5-year old PCs. I might be wrong... check out this web site:
http://www.daileyint.com/hmdpc/second.htm

Michael MacDonald
12-26-2010, 5:06 PM
http://www.gadgetvalue.com/

even better link

Joe Pelonio
12-26-2010, 7:49 PM
I recently had a laptop repaired at a place that sells used machines. They run 3-4 years old, some Vista, mostly with XP. The desktops were going for $150-200. Much older and you do end up having to pay someone to take it away.

Jim Koepke
12-26-2010, 8:45 PM
Bruce,

Your profile does not show a location, but I think most big cities have an electronics recycling program.

I know when I lived in the San Francisco area there were a few choices from recycling, second hand dealers to charitable organizations that wanted old computers for folks who couldn't afford one.

Good luck,

jtk

Bryan Morgan
12-26-2010, 11:07 PM
Sadly, not much. You might be able to donate it to a school, but even they have minimum requirements these days. You can find much better and newer computers online for less than 100 bucks these days.

Michael Gaynes
12-27-2010, 12:01 AM
You may be able to re-purpose the computer as a server if you have a home network. It's quite simple. I used a small program, TightVNC, to remotely access the new server. I use it to network a couple of external hard drives and my printers. You could also store all of you media files on it so that everyone on your network can connect individually.

This is the tutorial I followed: http://vitamincm.com/reusing-anreusing-an-old-pc-as-a-server

Bruce Koch
12-27-2010, 10:04 AM
I guess by the time you wipe the hard drive you will not make anything on it. I guess its going too the big recycling center in the sky.

Kelly Davis
12-27-2010, 1:06 PM
Your in luck Bruce, my advice will be free today ;) i do computers... 1.5 ghz, 256 ram ~ that's Sad... XP doesn't run very well on anything less than 1GB of ram or at least I wouldn't recommend anyone buying one that is less than that.

if it came with 17" or greater monitor i'd say about $10 - $20 bucks.

Btw, I'm typing this on 1.5ghz pent 4 right now, but I have 2 gigs of ram :) if it had 1 GB or more of Ram, it would be a great machine for someone who wants to jump on and get some email (typically grand parents or some super cheap guy like me)

My recommendation, put it on craigslist - slap 20 bucks on it and see what happens.

Derek Gilmer
12-27-2010, 1:34 PM
If you can find a computer geek they might want it. That would make a sweet little linux server as mentioned above for someone to play with. It could be setup as a home music server, light webserver etc. Maybe a local school knows a less than rich kid that likes computers who would like to tinker with it.

Be sure whatever you do, you either A) trust the recipient to read everything you had on the HD or B) take the hard drive out and destroy it. Having dome some disk forensics it is amazing what can be recovered even after some thorough cleaning. At the very least run DBAN (http://www.dban.org/) on it before letting go of the hard drive.

Greg Scull
12-27-2010, 1:40 PM
My advice, Take the hard disk out. Disassemble the Hard Disk take out the platters and ruin them some how ( use a power tool or something ) and pull the rare earth magnets out of the hard drive to use in the shop for shop fixtures. Post the remaining components on freecycle or the free craigslist section so some geek can use them in their next frankenputer.

You can even keep the power supply to power an electrolysis tank or something :) I just did this last week and have a #4 hand plane bubbling away now :)

Derek Gilmer
12-27-2010, 1:46 PM
You can even keep the power supply to power an electrolysis tank or something :)

Works great for interrogating the neighbors to find out who threw trash in your yard to. :eek:

Greg Scull
12-27-2010, 2:19 PM
Works great for interrogating the neighbors to find out who threw trash in your yard to. :eek:

HAHA! Ive got a neighbor who has chased people down and made them wash out his recycling bin for putting a beer can in it.

He could use a dunk or two :)

glenn bradley
12-27-2010, 2:24 PM
+1 for donating it to somewhere, anywhere. There are folks who get computers to people who would find almost anything a joy to receive.

Don Alexander
12-28-2010, 5:20 AM
what you have is a very funny looking boat anchor its not worth money might be worth something as was suggested for the HD magnets and possibly the power supply idea

as a computer its not likely you can even give it away as it will cost more to dispose of than its worth

Bryan Rocker
12-28-2010, 11:59 AM
Here in Beavercreek Ohio, the Good Will stores will take any computer and recycle it for you. The only down side to computers is the continual upgrades make older machines worthless. I have an old Dell Inspirion 800 with a Pentium 3 900 with only 128k of ram......it is sooooo slow but it still boots up...

Bryan

Dan Mages
12-28-2010, 1:42 PM
Dell and Goodwill Industries have an electronics recycling program. You can find the details at http://reconnectpartnership.com/.

Dan

Peter Stahl
12-29-2010, 7:24 AM
My daughter was in the Navy do IT stuff and she said that they removed the hard drive and destroyed it before getting rid of the PC. Call you local town/city recycle people, they may have a special day they pick up stuff like that. I put out a bunch of really old electronic stuff for ours and trash pickers got it before they could pick it up. I would also think this PC was worth pretty much nothing seeing how old it is. Like someone said a computer geek might be able to use it for something. I'm sure you could run some version of Linux on it and use it for surfing the internet.

Harry Hagan
12-29-2010, 3:55 PM
What’s the first thing burglars, thieves, (and trash pickers too) look for these days?—the financial data, passwords, etc., stored on your hard drive. The only sure way of preventing this is to physically destroy, burn, and then nuke the hard drive.

Bryan Morgan
12-30-2010, 1:24 PM
What’s the first thing burglars, thieves, (and trash pickers too) look for these days?—the financial data, passwords, etc., stored on your hard drive. The only sure way of preventing this is to physically destroy, burn, and then nuke the hard drive. They make great targets at the shooting range! Just think of all the times your computer crashed and gave you grief! :) At work we get them ground up and get a certificate of destruction. Its not free to do this though.

Greg Scull
12-30-2010, 1:29 PM
pull the platters and send them through drum sander :)

Curt Harms
12-31-2010, 7:35 AM
pull the platters and send them through drum sander :)

How about some quality time with a torch? I'm not sure whether heating would totally destroy the data or not. The magnets are powerful little suckers. I just disassemble drives and usually bend the crap out of the platters in the process. Put 'em in a trash bag with moist pungent cat litter. If somebody wants to sort through bags of cat crap at the landfill, they've earned whatever they can find.:p

paul cottingham
12-31-2010, 1:18 PM
Make a darn fine diskless terminal.

Curt Harms
01-01-2011, 7:45 AM
For someone with more smarts than money, that'd be an adequate machine running desktop Linux. I exhumed an R31 Thinkpad with a PIII 1ghz. processor and 256Mb RAM. It ran Ubuntu 32 bit Linux just fine for web browsing & everyday office work. There's typically 115-130Mb. RAM being used with Firefox open. The one thing it doesn't do well is run Flash apps e.g. YouTube. Steve Jobs says flash isn't necessary anyway so no biggie :p. It helps some to run FlashBlock in FireFox. I found 256 Mb. on Ebay for less than $10 shipped so put that in. It's still using the same amount of RAM. Probably using little or no swap now though.

paul cottingham
01-01-2011, 2:15 PM
more smarts than money? I Worked in IT for 20 years and find Ubuntu easier to install than Windows ever was.

I'm just sayin'

Bryan Morgan
01-01-2011, 10:50 PM
more smarts than money? I Worked in IT for 20 years and find Ubuntu easier to install than Windows ever was.

I'm just sayin'

This has been true for many years. I remember years ago an old version of Mandrake being like a 2 click install... I was totally amazed! I'd never seen an install like that. Fedora was similar. All these people running around spreading nonsense that Linux is "too hard" pfffft. Maybe Slackware 2 or something... but not these days.

Curt Harms
01-02-2011, 8:54 AM
Easy? Yup sure is....if the hardware, printers etc. are recognized. If you have dial-up internet like some here do, good luck with that. It's possible to use dial-up networking but it sure doesn't seem like something for the faint-of-heart. There aren't t a half dozen "all windows all the time" magazines for Linux like there are for windows and not everyone's friend or relative is an 'expert'. When I buy hardware today I do some research first. H-P seems very good about supporting Linux for printing and scanning and Dell sells some computers with Ubuntu installed out of the box. Brother printers and MFDs are pretty well supported under Linux but if the machine is not in the FooMatic database(love that name:D), a few lines in a terminal are probably in order. RealTek and Atheros are good for wireless adapters.

I've read its also possible to get a refund on a windows license if you buy a machine with windows already installed and you don't use the windows installation. Not easy but possible.

Bryan Morgan
01-03-2011, 12:41 AM
Easy? Yup sure is....if the hardware, printers etc. are recognized. If you have dial-up internet like some here do, good luck with that. It's possible to use dial-up networking but it sure doesn't seem like something for the faint-of-heart. There aren't t a half dozen "all windows all the time" magazines for Linux like there are for windows and not everyone's friend or relative is an 'expert'. When I buy hardware today I do some research first. H-P seems very good about supporting Linux for printing and scanning and Dell sells some computers with Ubuntu installed out of the box. Brother printers and MFDs are pretty well supported under Linux but if the machine is not in the FooMatic database(love that name:D), a few lines in a terminal are probably in order. RealTek and Atheros are good for wireless adapters.

I've read its also possible to get a refund on a windows license if you buy a machine with windows already installed and you don't use the windows installation. Not easy but possible.


I haven't had any trouble getting anything to work with Linux. Finding drivers for Win 7 64 bit on the other hand..... :) Heck, going through trouble right now at work trying to migrate to a hosted Exchange solution and Microsoft doesn't even make some software for 64 bit Win 7 for their own junk!! We get the "we're working on it" line.... of course they don't tell you this BEFORE you sign up for it... bleh

Curt Harms
01-03-2011, 8:47 AM
I'm surprised to hear about problems with Win 7. I'm not an IT guy, just a hobbyist but if one of my prime selling points to being an all-Microsoft shop was that all my stuff worked together, "we're working on it" wouldn't cut it, especially a year after being declared ready for prime time.

The biggest hardware PITA with Linux seems to be wireless networking. There are so many variants from 1 manufacturer and one driver for many models which oftentimes has to be compiled first. Take a look at Ubuntuforums(dot)org and their wireless networking subforum. I have 2 old wireless G adapters from TrendNet, both model TEW424UB. Version 2.x uses an SiS chipset which is not supported natively in the Linux kernel, you apparently have to use Ndiswrapper. Version 3.x uses a RealTek 8187B(??) which is has kernel support and works great but they look identical.

Derek Gilmer
01-03-2011, 9:01 AM
I haven't had any trouble getting anything to work with Linux. Finding drivers for Win 7 64 bit on the other hand..... :) Heck, going through trouble right now at work trying to migrate to a hosted Exchange solution and Microsoft doesn't even make some software for 64 bit Win 7 for their own junk!! We get the "we're working on it" line.... of course they don't tell you this BEFORE you sign up for it... bleh

Aside from dual monitors I'd agree. Until recently getting dual monitors configured with out reading 42.5 man pages and tweaking xconf files for an hour was impossible.

Andrew Pitonyak
01-06-2011, 1:42 AM
My daughter was in the Navy do IT stuff and she said that they removed the hard drive and destroyed it before getting rid of the PC.

I expect this for a classified machine. I suppose that it is almost always "safe" to shred a drive [if you own a drive shredder, they are really cool], but, software exists that does a pretty good job of clearing a hard drive. Unfortunately, it takes a while to run. For a computer that old, however, I find it difficult to believe that it is worth the trouble to do anything time consuming.

paul cottingham
01-06-2011, 2:09 AM
Even an old computer can have data useful to an identity thief.