Comments on: I Generate Far Too Much e-Waste

By: Another Dave

Another Dave — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:10:52 +0000

My wife says I too generate too much e-waste. But, I argue, I’m not the one generating it; I usually pick up my silicon crack second-hand, spiff it up, use it until I can’t fix it, then toss it. I’m my own recycler shop.

But then there’s the stuff that I don’t use but don’t have the heart to get rid of. Like the first Mac SE I bought in 1993, and the Color Classic I rescued from a dumpster (still works flawlessly), and the 68000 dash 30fx I rescued from the recycler… I could go on. Is it really helping anything by keeping it out of the dump but in my basement? My wife doesn’t think so.

By: Marcus

Marcus — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:57:55 +0000

WAIT.
Insist on waiting for the latest version of the device, and then if there is not an update, don’t think of buying it.
Oh yeah, if it looks interesting, try stepping into a P.I.’s shoes an investigation, see if it really is worth your money.

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:06:16 +0000

I resist by not looking. Okay the commercials are hard to avoid but I never go to Best Buy just to look around. Of course, my crack is art supplies. I feel guilty about how many trees are on my studio table.

By: EV

EV — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:22:40 +0000

I’m with RobertSeattle’s view. For example, several months ago there was hype about how we’re ‘running out of copper’, which is bunk. With the exception of any that we’ve blasted into space, it’s all still here — just harder and more expensive to get to.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:01:21 +0000

You know, I always thought that if some of the more impoverished areas in the world could just adopt some older technologies (like Windows 3.1) then we could just donate all of our old hardware and then instead of not having any computers at all they would have tech that was just 5-10 years old.

I once looked up charity donations for PCs, and their minimum requirement for a donation was basically a brand new PC.

By: RobertSeattle

RobertSeattle — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:29:57 +0000

I have a slight contrarian view on all this waste business. Once we are smart enough (50 years?) to create robots that can sift through our garbage dumps and extract all the valuable stuff 7x24x365, my prediction is that our current dumps will become virtual “gold mines”.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:05:45 +0000

The siren song of the Shiny New Computer is being awfully compelling this year, especially when I ended up at the 3-story Apple Store in NYC this weekend. What didn’t help is that one of my machines is currently having some serious motherboard issues, something that having a new hard drive or emptying space or adding RAM will do absolutely nothing about.

Our family has yet to dispose of any of our computers, though we tend to play ‘hand me down’ when kids from college get new machines and then pass them up the family tree. Despite this, we’ve got a garage full of computer history – there’s a Commodore 64, a Macintosh LC, a Performa, and a middle end Frankenstein PowerMac from 1997 that was my parents’ main computer up until a month ago (they now are setting up a brand new iMac).

My brother actually likes to refurbish old computers and turn them into useful gadgets like digital music players, virtual picture frames, and he said he saw an idea to turn one into an aquarium.

By: mrs.djs

mrs.djs — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:56:22 +0000

Have yourself some children.

It’ll be a race to see what you lose faster-the disposable income used to purchase the fun stuff -or- the free time you once had to actually use the fun stuff. ;)

By: Moon

Moon — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:45:05 +0000

Just tell yourself that you aren’t going to buy it until there is a refurbished one available.

Even if you don’t buy the refurb one, you will have waited long enough for the hard marketing to have subsided and it won’t be all shiny and new. At that point, you will be able to tell if you REALLY needed it, or if it was just marketing.