Old Laptops & PC Scrapbooks
 

I would appreciate if someone could tell me what I can do with the accumulation of old laptops, desktops that I have shoved in the cupboard each time I've updated to a new model.

Over the last ten years I have two old laptops and a desktop (gave one away already) that are sitting there collecting dust - all around the Pentium 1 (or 100 I think it was called) or 486 era. They are like old scrapbooks that contain all of the current events of the time, photo's, mail etc. What have others done to compact all those keepsakes for future use? And what have you done with your old machines - are they worth anything?

Cheers... Thread Bear

You could use a cd burner for all your old contents.

Your old machines aren't probably worth much Im afraid with the price of a new one being pretty reasonable and the quick turnaround in new ones becoming old ones.

Might be worth looking on ebay. A friend of mine said she just sold a non-functional Viao for £160...

Or you could run Linux on them . . .

Thank you all very much for the ideas.

I think I will hand them over to the disadvantaged. I didn't even know such an organisation existed. Thanks for the link ORAC.

What an epic job it's going to be to extract all my old stuff from the machines - not looking forward to that job.

Cheers... T.B

TB :

To get all the data off the machines, you need to connect them all together - the easiest way is a small network and make the machines' hard drives visible to all others on the network. Copying the files is then straightforward.

It's a bit more involved if you don't have network cards in the machines but you should be able to find out how to do it with a search through the past threads on this forum.

TB

charities rarely use all the machines they are given however they are worth calling to see if they can be of use

why not look out that old copy of answering machine software that you once got with a pc or modem and use it as the worlds biggest most overpowered answering machine... 'Press 1 for me and 2 for the wife'

the most cost efficient way of removing data is probably a zip drive as judging by the age of the machines then missing data will probably not be too big

Or be like the rest of the unscrupulous and advertise them on an online auction site

If they do not have network cards, then a 'laplink' cable and software will do the trick. May types around now. Link each machine via the parra or serial ports to the newst machine. Suck up the data and organise/burn to CD.

Delete as best you can, running specialist software if needs be - i.e. commercially sensitive data.

If the machines are not needed, most town refuse areas have hardware places. Remove the hard drive and disable it with a hammer - for your security!

Thanks for that... makes alot of sense.

I'll have to go and visit the computer shop and get what is needed to hook all these up.

I have got a built in cd burner in the desktop machine and a usb plug-in burner for the laptops. Would it be best to network them all to the desktop and burn it from there?

Windows 95 or 98 runs on them. Or is it better to network it all to my XP (current) machine. Will it make any difference?

Does reformating them clear the hard drive somewhat or is there always going to be remenants of my activity?

Thanks for the help. Technology left me behind from about 1998 - I'm still trying to catch up. Bit like chasing my tail!!

Data on reformatted disks can still be recovered. But there's a lot of software around to overwrite it several times. e.g. Kill Disk.

Just do a search on format and overwrite and pick the one you like the look of most.