Old Computers - What are we supposed to do with them?

What are we supposed to do with old computers?

They contaminate land fills with gazillion chemicals that could be recycled.
http://www.epa.gov/Region2/r3/problem.htm
http://www.techrecycle.com

There has been a profitable 3rd party market that works with refurbished
almost like new 2nd hand equipment.  If you have a properly trained computer
staff, they know to delete confidential & licensed material from hard disk
before letting old computers get into the 2nd hand market.  But many
companies & individuals with old systems have no such personnel.  So there is
a security risk if confidential information is contained on the 2nd hand
equipment you letting go of, regardless of where it is going.

Some places are extremely sloppy about throwing in the garbage computer media
that was licensed to them, especially colleges & universities.  They get some
PCs for labs & offices, that come supplied with the same software that is
standard to anything sold to an individual person, but the institution buys a
site license authorizing same software installed on hundreds or thousands of
machines.  This means they have duplicate media sold to them that they do not
need.  They should delete or destroy the contents of that media, but they
cannot be bothered.  They just pitch it in the garbage.

Along come garbage divers - people who root through the garbage looking for
free software ... free to them ... this is illegal, but the way the original
software copyright holders manage the sale of their software is to share in
the blame for setting up this situation.  They sure don't make it obvious to
the university what the responsibility is for proper disposal of the media
containing software that no one is supposed to have.

Computers have value in hands of beginners if IBM or Microsoft etc. supported
some OS that would work on refurbished vintage 10 year old hardware.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TYR      Message 2168

There are several volunteer organizations that accept donations of old
computers to be refurbished & put into good operating condition to be useable
by children of poor families in this & other nations, but Microsoft & some
other companies are making it progressively more difficult for that
charitable service to continue.

The old computers cannot run the newer versions of software.
They have to have the older versions.
Microsoft no longer allows the older versions to be marketed.
Microsoft no longer allows the older versions to be transferred to another
owner.
Microsoft is not the only computer company that is taking this attitude.

It would be nice if computer vendors supplied package deal:
Here is this old hardware that I am upgrading to a more recent version of
Windows or other OS & I bequeath my old PC & the old version of the software
to the 2nd hand market ... I want someone who is below me on the economic
ladder, who cannot afford a computer, such as children in the 3rd world, to
get the benefit of access to my old computer & be able to use the old version
of the software, because this old PC does not have the gas to run the latest
version.  I certify that my old files have been deleted, except what is
needed to run this software.  I pay some fee to the software copyright
authorities & we get paperwork certifying that my new computer & new OS are
legal, and also that the package deal of a refurbished old PC with the old
stuff are legal to be a hand me down to someone who might not otherwise
afford a computer.  Help them join the ranks of the users of this technology.

I think we should be able to sell or trade in our old technology like we can
sell or trade in an old automobile.  We just need to do some paperwork & pay
some fees.

But according to "no dumping" Letter to Editor page 46 of Nov 5 www.eweek.com
two USA laws
Gramm_Leach_Bliley Act &
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
have made it illegal to dump, donate, or refurbish / resell old computers.

So what are we supposed to do with them?

I would like to check out whether the letter writer was correctly stating the
situation ... perhaps there is some wiggle room in Clintonesque
interpretation of some of those words.
http://www.politechbot.com/
http://www.attorneys-worldwide.com/USLAWS/WASHINGTON_D.C._LAW.html
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

What were the legislators trying to accomplish with these new rules?
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/chill/
http://www.techlawjournal.com/welcome.htm

What other alternatives are there?

Well we could rent some place to plug them in to help with research.
This is OUR computer ... we wish we could resell it but that is now illegal.
http://www.intel.com/cure/how.htm

Perhaps there are some loop holes left to exploit.
Perhaps it is legal to put it some place where it is awful easy to get stolen.

Perhaps we can open a remote office then sell off that office to another
company in which transferring the assets needed to run that office MIGHT be
legal when they include technology.  We can claim that we are not reselling
old computers but rather they are new computers.

Are we allowed to trade them in on a newer model?
What is the place that sold us the newer model supposed to do with the old
ones & their old parts?

Is this good for the future of the computer economy?

Sorry Bankrupsy Court
You cannot include computers in the assets because it is no longer legal to
transfer them ... in fact you now have an inventory storage liability.   It
is now your problem what to do with the old computers ... you may not sell
them, you may not give them away, and you may not raid them for the spare
parts.  They are going to clutter up the Judiciary buildings until some Judge
makes a ruling that this is an insane set of legislative consequences.

Sorry Charity
In the past we have deleted the confidential stuff on our computer & the
software that we are not allowed to resell & we have given you the rest & you
have gotten good value out of it & we got a small tax write off, but the new
rules have made it impractical for us to continue doing this.
We can afford to donate our old stuff to help you do your work, but that not
legal any more.
It is legal for us to gift you a brand new system, but we can't afford that.
So here is a financial donation for you to spend where you most need it.

Sorry Computer Vendors
We have only got room in our facility for one computer & it is illegal for us
to get rid of it so we cannot upgrade to what you are selling.  We just will
have to continue to try to get the most that we can get out of the stuff we
now have.

We already have problem of contemporary computer technology becoming a drag
on the economy.  Ziff Davis John Dodge report page 74 of Nov 5 www.eweek.com
claims that informational technology is now behind the 8 ball on productivity.

I am not surprised because 99% of computer buyers favor cheapest & get what
they pay for ... brain dead security & tech support in name only.  Buying
cheapest comes with certain trade offs ... you now get to spend 1/3 of your
time fighting idiot problems that would not exist if the mantra was to buy
quality & security & reliability & etc. instead of cheapest.

Dodge cites
www.mckinsey.com and
www.research.ibm.com
as the reasons why systems have become overly complex & that is why they now
undermine the productivity of their users.

Well people made them that way & people can fix it, or continue to demand the
cheapest irrespective of all other considerations & get what we pay for.

So have we come to the end of the age of improving computers?
Once we buy one it is no longer legal to get rid of it when we want a new one?
Perhaps we need to rethink corporate valuation of these assets that we are no
longer allowed to trade in on next year's model.

There was one place I once worked that renamed stuff.
This is not a musical instrument, but "musical goods."
This is not books, but paper information.
The reason was that we had stores in a shopping center mall where the rental
rates were based on the type of merchandise we moved, but no place in the
rental agreement was there any definition of terminology.  So we renamed all
products in our computer inventory from names that had high rents to names
that had low rents.

Perhaps we can rename our computers to some other label that is not subject
to these restrictions.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)