Posts Tagged ‘desktop’
What to do with old computer parts…..
October 8th, 2009
I have a lot of old computer parts and don’t know what to do with them.
Items include:
- keyboards
- old computer towers
- old HP printer
- old dial up modems
Is there a place to recycle this items? Do you get a price for giving them to companies who may want to recycle them? I doubt anyone would want to buy them on an online auction site (eg eBay) unless I am wrong… Basic keyboards now you can get for 5.99 and mother of the bride dresses starting at 190.00. Dialup modem, if in working order, you can still sell for probably 5-10 dollars�new is about 35 bucks, internal and about 40 bucks external.
Towers, if the power supply is higher then 250 volts you can get for it maybe 10 dollars�I say maybe because with all the gadgets today attached in the computers, specially if people play games with a powerful chip and video cards needing good cooling, everyone needs 300 to 350 power supply, maybe even more. Old Hp if not used by now has blocked jets by dried out ink.
Try giving it to Salvation army, they sell keyboards and some other electrical appliances�they might take it. Or just take it to your local tip�now all the tips have section where they separate parts for recycling�they should know what to do with it. Local computer clubs usually provide systems to the poor families, children, schools, and charities.
Many clubs, plus the charity thrift stores, put a very fast operating system, like http://www.mepis.org on the towers, and set up a full system to donate or sell cheap. Otherwise, you will be drinking the 8 pounds of toxins, cadmium, lead, that leach into water shed, from the land fill, from each tower and monitor that is dumped!
Many of us recycle the stuff we can’t use or sell, dismantling old plastics and metals, and getting paid for the steel, copper, aluminum, and the GOLD that fills old computers! Some professional recyclers have found tons of money in some of the chips on the boards!
No money, often, if you don’t dismantle them down to the recycle material! You usually get naught, or even pay, for them to take the entire lot! Many of us use towers and desktops of 100mhz to 800mhz speed without any monitor, as a hardware firewall/router, for upto 36 networked clients. http://ipcop.org has the FREE program with instructions.
Many of us find that 400mhz and faster units work well as a network file server in our home or small office networks! The secret is to run one of the 800 FREE fast OSes! http://livecdlist.com http://distrowatch.com
How XP Mode Is Supposed to Work
May 5th, 2009
XPM lets you run older apps on the new OS by doing two things: First, XPM lets you use a new, improved version of Microsoft Virtual PC to run a complete, freely downloadable “virtual” copy of Windows XP that runs in a window that contains a Windows XP desktop—which appears in a window on the Windows 7 desktop.
Second, XPM lets you install applications into this virtual copy of Windows XP, in exactly the same way you install them in an ordinary XP setup. This means that you can run those applications seamlessly from the Windows 7 desktop, just as if they were standard Windows 7 applications. In this second “seamless” mode, you don’t see the Windows XP desktop. Instead, you see just the window that contains the XP-based application. The whole virtual Windows XP system is running invisibly in the background.
When you save a file from an application running in seamless mode under XPM, the file gets saved by default to the same Documents folder you use under Windows 7. But the seamless application runs so seamlessly that you can also save or open files on any drive or folder anywhere in your Windows 7 setup.
