Recycling – Performance Zen

NOTE: This is a retelling of a post from 14 years ago.

I have a thing for re-using old hardware for server equipment. This is odd given that the ease in deploying apps/sites/cat pictures on shiny cloud services, but I am old school and prefer to be able to put my hands on the devices that serve my stuff.

Currently, the 2008 First Generation Aluminum MacBook is running Ubuntu Server and delivering the content you are looking at. Previously, it had been hosted on one of the Raspberry Pi 3b+ machines you see in the background, but I figured it was time for an “upgrade”. I have an old Dell desktop machine under my desk that I may repurpose to run the upgraded version of Ubuntu LTS, but that is a project for the summer.

In the past, back when we lived in Massachusetts, I had a hodgepodge rack of devices ranging from ancient Dell desktops, old server machines, and a bunch of hopes and dreams.

At least with the new setup, I don’t have to worry about there being an inch of water in the basement after a heavy rain.

There have been stories around for the last month that suddenly make “old” hardware shiny again – install ChromeOS Flex! Well, that’s not the only use that old machines have.

Servers can run on just about any platform. Even if it’s just a local DNS or MX server, it doesn’t need to go on the trash heap.

It’s not just you who can benefit from recycling or donating still working computers and equipment. Not everyone has access to the best and the shiniest, but that may not be what they need. Giving a family an old laptop that can run ChromeOS Flex may make it easier to raise them above the digital poverty line. That old iPhone or Android Device that you aren’t using could make it easier for a family to stay in touch.

If you aren’t using it anymore, donate or recycle it appropriately. Info on donating and recycling your old hardware is available here.

Old to you may be amazing to someone else.

The title is a deliberate misspelling. An event in the last two weeks has got me thinking about EWaste, and the way it is treated in the US, and likely the entire developed world.

About two weeks ago, #1 son told my wife to “STOP THE CAR!” as they were driving down the road near our house. Thinking he was mad, she did. #1 son leaped out and returned to the car with an HP Pavilion Desktop, in the vain hope that it could replace his current dinosaur computer.

This morning, I completed the configuration process by adding a wireless network card to this machine and they are now up and running with a computer from 2006-07, rather than the one they had been on up until then, which was from 1999 (seriously).

This leaves me to wonder why someone would dispose of a machine that is still perfectly functional. A machine that could have been donated to anyone of a number of causes to help those far less fortunate than we are.

I may complain incessantly about my lack of a MacBook ($|Pro|Air), but in the area of technology, I am well off. I have an excellent pair of servers that host my sites. I have a number of older machines in my basement to serve a variety of purposes, including development. I have my personal laptop and a very powerful work-provided laptop. And my wife has the most powerful machine in the house, to get e-mail and cruise Craigslist.

We are not computer-challenged. Yet, I do not take the disposal of any of this technology lightly. If I do dispose of technology, it goes into the city garbage ONLY on hazardous waste days. If I can, I give the machines to organizations who can use even a very old machine.

The processing of EWaste is a shameful burden that the wealthy of the world impose and throw down to the down-trodden. We pass along the poisons to those who are least able to say no, without a second thought.

To find and reincarnate a computer on the street is the act of a truly geeky family.

To have thrown the computer to the curb in the first place is a sign of the shameful ignorance in our society for what is done with EWaste.

Are you being a responsible computer owner, as a person or a corporation?

Category: Recycling

Old Hardware is Still Good Hardware

NOTE: This is a retelling of a post from 14 years ago.

In praise of found technology and the waste we treat it