On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Bill Yakowenko wrote:
> I am slowly coming to accept that my value set was molded when
> certain things were scarce, and no longer are.
>
> I would have been thrilled to get any kind of computer when I was
> in high school. So it is hard for me to imagine people willing to
> throw away _any_ computer. But now I am starting to see that XT's
> and 286's are like paper cups. Not only do they tend to work less
> well as they age (they eventually break and lack support from their
> manufacturers), but they are really next to valueless in terms of
> replacement cost. Even if getting a computer to somebody who is
> destitute, the time of the compu-geek who sets it up is worth more
> than a newer faster machine would be.
>
> The only difference between the old x86 machines and paper cups is
> quantity: there are fewer paper cups.
>
> Bill.
>
> (I'm not advocating a throw-away culture, BTW. Just noting the
> economics of the situation. I wish we could convince people to put
> in the effort to use and learn from the old machines rather than
> continuously filling up landfills with them just to make more. But
> I'm still a long way from getting the rest of the world to see things
> my way.)
I'm afraid that will not happen until we are able to convince folks that
one can do much useful work with a computer with out pretty(?) pictures
and rodents. And I fear that the likelihood of that is asymptotic with
zero!
- don
>
> (Okay, so that's another difference between XTs and paper cups:
> paper cups are more landfill-friendly.)
>
>
> On 15 Apr 1999, Mike Ford <mikeford_at_netwiz.net> wrote:
> ] The Goodwill near me just got 600 computers from Pacific Bell, all 486 and
> ] older, most in pretty good shape. The result is that a LOT more only
> ] slightly wanky 486 boxes are getting tossed in the scrappers bin. Goodwill
> ] won't take a 386, or if it gets in the product stream it goes either to the
> ] scrapper or the huge AS-IS morning auction of bins of stuff only loosely
> ] sorted by category.
> ]
> ] However painfull you may find it personally, it only takes a TINY bit wrong
> ] to make an old computer have negative value except as scrap or parts.
>
>
donm_at_cts.com
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Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) Z-Node 9 - 619-454-8412
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Received on Sat Apr 17 1999 - 15:12:20 BST