I love being a geek.

We met with The Guy's parents for dinner tonight. We do that once in a while to catch up and stay in touch and so on. they brought two old laptops they no longer use/need, as they both have new ones, and they were wondering if I was interested in using them for parts.

Obviously I didn't hestitate. I grabbed them both, plugged them in and started charging them. The bigger and newer of the two is not reacting to the power cord, but the smaller Compaq 2510p charged and even booted to Windows XP.

I'm currently posting from a live session of Linux Mint on the 2510p, to make sure all the pieces are working properly before installing the mojito flavor.

I love being a geek. It gets me free toys.

 

Right on, lady! :highfive

I've inherited countless electronic tidbits over the years. It never ceases to amaze me what some people consider to be outdated or useless.

The Geek Motto: Bring us your old, your broken, your gimped gadgets that are yearning to live again! :major

 

Yep, I've either had to cut down on the amount of electronic 'freebies' I own, or get a bigger house!:confused ~ Sometimes life is a bit too good.

 

My garage and workshop has literally hundreds of parts stored in various boxes and if i had the cases i could probably build 5 or 6 complete PCs.
I think us geeks are also hoarders.
http://bestsmileys.com/computer1/8.gif

 

I had to clean out my basement early last year as it was getting 75% finished for an apartment for a relative. 4 complete desktops with CRTs had to go. They were 1998 Dell Pentium 1's from a business that went out at the end of '07.
(I had visions of a folding farm but it turned out they were just too slow for any great point production.)
No great loss but those CRT's were expensive to get rid of at $12.50/each at the recyclers.

 

In many areas there are free, environmentally friendly ways to recycle CRTs, TVs and other old PC hardware:

* In some larger cities, Goodwill will accept monitors and PC hardware (call ahead first). Houston and many other cities have "Goodwill Computer Works" stores that sell working items second-hand and recycle the rest at no cost.

* Post the items in the "free" section of the local Craigslist. To be safe, have interested parties contact you via "reply" with their phone #.

* Check with your city or county. Many offer free recycling of old TVs and monitors at a permanent recycling center or recycling drives held a few times per year.

* Not sure if this is still going on but, for a while, Best Buy was offering free recycling - no purchase necessary.

 

I end up "inheriting" a few PCs a month at my shop. Older units that are uneconomical to repair are often abandoned (if it's not picked up within 30 days of diagnosis or repair, I own it ).

Since I have a small shop, space is at a premium. To keep it from looking like the geek version of Sanford and Son, I scavenge any working parts (drives, memory, etc.) and get rid of the rest. Some items (esp. notebook screens) I sell on eBay; the rest goes to Goodwill (since they get paid for the scrap metal, it's a "win-win" ).

 

Nice, free parts! :highfive

I now have three laptops that refuse to take a charge, and/or refuse to react to the power button. There has got to be a good motherboard between them...!

 

I can't help but wonder if some of these "Free toys" are obtained by you casually mentioning you like their laptops and then showing them how large and sharp your sword collection is :-D

 

They're obtained by me casually mentioning that I like free toys, and by me fixing any and all computer problems they encounter.

 

That's what I thought :-D

Seriously though, I only ever get the old crap that has nooooo use whatsoever lol, I mean I have a lot of EDO Ram and P1, P2 chips, I don't have any x2's or 300gb HDD laying around... except the ones I just replaced in my machine.

Having said that, I am typing this message on a free Acer Aspire 5570 .... with a vertical digital crack on the right side of the screen which sometimes obscure letters :-D

 

If you notice any "wiggle room" when connecting the power adapter to the PC, it could just be a bad internal power jack. If you're skilled at soldering, repl. power jacks for most models are usually just a few bucks on eBay...it's worth a shot.

 

I'm a hopeless clutz when it comes to soldering. LOL

But you're right. There is wiggle room, and when I asked her, mom-in-law admitted that the reason the laptop stopped working was she tripped over the power cord and yanked it out of the laptop, and it stopped charging the battery. Definitely an internal psu-thing. And I hve a co-worker who is good with solder, so I might ask him to help me out with this.

 

Yup same here:-D I don't even keep old desktop computers anymore,I've even given away my old gaming boxes which make excellent surfers!

But! I'm always after goodies,if someone has an old TV I'll take the HV flyback out,the large caps,transistor sinks,ferrite cores and any transformers and throw them in my boxes of goodies.

Then recycle the junk.

 

If you asked me to do it I'd tell you to take it apart first:yum

Disassembling and reassembling laptops is a time consuming PITArolleyes

 

If I was asking you to do it, I would be taking it apart for you. I'm a considerate geek.

 

I've never asked anyone to take apart a laptop I've fixed:-D but I've never fixed one for a geek

 

everyone loves you being a geek

 

Apologies to Mimsy, this is a question for Billmc66 have just read about metal to metal hip replacment causing problems and wondered if you knew anything about it. seems as if were slowley being poisened. not to worry though Bill I'm not in a hurry

 

Yay free stuff!
I love being a geek as well.

 

I can relate - but I have been frequently surprised at what still has use. Like Phantom I had to go through my inventory and weed out the older stuff. My "life-cycle" for parts starts in my upstairs closet. As I get newer parts, older stock goes bumped down to the basement. When they get bumped from there it's the end of the road. I had a couple of PII slot 1 processors (a 333mhz and a 233mhz) that I actually offered on here free for a while. I was finally going to toss them in the recycle pile when I found someone that needed them. Turns out a friend's friend's uncle, a farmer, had been looking for a replacement slot 1 for some kind of equipment used on his dairy farm. I was happy (and surprised) they found a useful second life.

 

Hi Tony thanks for thinking of me.
I have also read about the problems so i rang my surgeon (i have his private number) and he told me that mine were not in the same category because they are Titanium (i bet they were expensive, thank god for insurance) with a synthetic cup the same as the plates and screws in my back and neck.

 

This

 

I'd have to agree with you there Bill, I'm a tech hoarder. Hehe:-D (Mostly OS's though)

 

Bill, Glad to hear yours were OK, I have just booked in to get my other hip done.
Bionic Bill and Tin Tony:-D

 

Would you like an old computer Laura:confused I have a nice AMD XP1900 with 500meg of memory or a nice 2.8P4 with a gig of memory.

They're yours as long as you pay for the postageroflmao

I just gave away my old AMD 3500 gaming system with a 6800GT,a gig of memory and my 30gig raptor hard drive to a friend of the family,it was useless to me just sat there collecting dust so he now has a wicked little Win 7 surfing/DTP machine and was totally over the moon with how fast it was 'mainly due to the harddrive'

 

So not like this???

 

The postage won't be that bad,only about $20 per kg and they only weigh about 10-15kg each:-D

It would probably be cheaper to employ an immigrant worker to construct one from scratch using toilet roll tubes:-D and it would probably have better specs:-D

 

Organized Disorganization.

 

You mean a madness with a method? :innocent

 

Well, you can dispense with those too, if ya want. Just 'show desktop icons' = 'off' in the view options. But, I guess you already knew that. (why did I even post!....I must be surrendering to the 'Geek side' roflmao

You could take all my Geek junk Laura, for 'gratis' - but I think paying for a trip to Australia would be a tad expensive, too.

Now I'm getting plants everywhere, since I've decided to grow food and stuff. My joint is looking like a jungle. Kinda ironic, since my location has supposedly been "The Jungle" for the last eleven years.:confusedrolleyes

 

Mimsy, did you do the dirty deed, and install LM on the new toy?

Obligatory song comes to mind.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH8N4s3pat0

 

Of course. The new laptop has been thoroughly Mintified.