Today, I heard an NPR report on a company that wants to help the environment by having you pay them for a convenient way to dispose of all your old or outdated electronic devices, including cell phones, computers, TVs, printers and cartridges. I figured that by getting air time on Future Tense, that GreenDisk must have a solid offering. After checking out their site, I thought their offering was not enough.
I would like to provide my fellow bloggers with an option for ridding of old tech gear.
When it comes time to buy something new, such as a 21″ flat-screen monitor, donate the existing item(s) you are replacing to the local school system. By doing this, you are essentially buying new tech gear at a discounted price while helping children, courtesy of the IRS. Most school systems have IT departments that are set up to accept contributions. When you stop off to donate items, the school system hands you a blank donation form. You get to determine the worth of the old items getting donated.
In practice, you might go out and buy that new dual-output video card for $100. Swap out that old video card and donate it to the local school system. When they give you a donation form, you would assess the value of that old video card. It might be worth $50. It might be worth $125. One can never tell these days, since there isn’t a computer electronics parts pricing guide that rules the after-market.
Each calendar year, households are allowed up to $5K in charitable contributions before an audit on the individual contributions is required by the IRS. We keep impeccable records at our house.
Citizenship
Good to see you’re doing you part to help bring down the deficit ;).
Ways To Dispose of Old Software?
Can anyone out there provide advice on disposal options for old, outdated, and out-versioned software? I just upgraded to CS 2 and I’m sitting here with the original InDesign CS packaging box, installation disk and serial #. I’m not sure of all the options for resale, trading, gifting or trashing the older version.
Thanks in advance for a range of options!
Registrations, locks, etc.
Usually, an end-user license agreement (EULA) is included with every software application. Unfortunately, your resale rights vary according to that EULA you accepted when you purchased the software.
Recently, many pieces of software explicitly disallow resale, and enforce this through the use of online registration upon first use. You should re-read the EULA on your old software, and verify that your new software does not require the old key in order to function, prior to attempting to sell your old stuff.
After re-reading your EULA, there’s a good chance your options will become obvious 🙂
That said, eBay is often a good place to clear out your old stuff. Sure, you may not make a mint on it, but there’s a good chance you can earn a couple of bucks, and feel good that someone else gets the use of the software for a bit more than the cost of postage.
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Matthew P. Barnson
1-4%
Heard an interesting stat today: the EPA estimates that 1-4% of all solid waste generated each year comes from old tech gear that people simply throw into the trash, rather than recycle.