Computer Recycling Center November, 2003 Newsletter

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	January 2004 - Happy New Year! This time of year I am reminded of goal-writing, and this works equally well with the business of using computers, reuse, and recycling. Our program sees an opportunity for more school districts to partner with groups like CRC, and host a reuse and recycling event. The district cherry-picks the equipment it wants to reuse, a school-sanctioned volunteer group has a mini-fund raiser as donors pay a small fee for the end-of-life handling, shipping, and processing fees (the school group pays out less than it takes in), and the CRC-type recycling group hauls away the unwanted, along with any equipment that has been hanging around the school waiting to be recycled. So one of our goals this year is to partner with more school districts and municipalities putting on reuse and recycling events. Lets focus on REUSE. The school district can have volunteer groups or clubs that already have a presence in the school, refurbish the equipment with the assistance of a CRC- type group, if needed. Now that CRC has partnered in a few of these events, I am surprised at the type of equipment NOT kept by the schools that we turned around and reused in other school districts. The percentage of equipment reused from our collections in 2003 INCREASED as more and more donors left ALL the parts in the computer (in every press interview I say that the best way to reuse a computer is to leave all the parts in it; that the parts will not work in the newer computers, so just leave them in). So here is my experience the other day with some of our Mac volunteers and many pre-G3 Macs. Again, this is only one point of view, but "DO try this at home (school)". These Macs were "power pc" models around 100 MHz (and going up to the mid 200's). Now, all Macs come with an OS (operating system) when new so wiping and reloading Macs is common make-ready practice with Mac Volunteers and not the same problem we see with Windows computers (licenses and key-codes). We were actually serving a school that had much older "pizza box" style Macs with small HDD (hard disk drives) and little RAM (memory). An external HDD was cabled to the back and it was easy to create an image from the computer to the external; it copied ALL the files of all thier programs. Cabling the external drive to the "power pc", it was a simple process to start-up using the external device, and then to copy the image onto the "power pc" HDD (after formating the HDD with the same level OS that would be imaged onto it). That was easy, only about 20 minutes for each of the of the ones that cooperated; a little longer for the ones that required more coaxing. These were ready now for stand-alone use back in classrooms with the software they were already using, only now the machines they were using would be perhaps three to four times faster. The same usefulness can be said for Mac laptops (the four-digit, not the 3-digit models). Add to their stand-alone use email and SOME internet. If there is no built-in modem, the drivers are in the OS for early USR [pcmcia card] modems (approx. 28.8), and perhaps others. This makes it easy to "plug-and-play" in the add-on modem. One problem with using old[er] laptops is that most have a dead battery that costs a lot to replace, and the solution is to just run it on the AC adaptor. Another interesting feature is that there is less of a threat of virus-related infection using the Mac OS and browsers such as Netscape, etc. Using MS Explorer I believe you will have keep your browser updated with patches and fixes (from the MS website) to keep your protection up. So these Mac laptops look like a simple and economical way to do email and some internet. But what about the software and sites that have utilities, pages, etc. that don't seem to work on the Mac? I discovered another interesting piece of information from one of our Mac volunteers. He uses one of the "big 3" ISP (internet service providers), and has also added a Windows based computer to his equipment collection recently and he has found that he can open or download these type of problem-pages on his Windows computer, and then send them to himself using a second email address he keeps, and then open them up on the Mac with [mostly] no problem. Very interesting, if this works this way for most Mac users.. There are two other problems I can think of with pre-G3 macs. One is connecting a newer VGA/SVGA monitor to an pre-G3 mac with the larger Mac video connector. The solution is to find an adaptor that connects to the Mac video connector on the back of the machine and has a 15 pin 3-row SVGA video-out, allowing you to use the more plentiful supply of used, or a new SVGA monitor. A "multi-sync" type monitor is a must so you do not have to mess around with finding one that will work well. The second is finding a printing solution for these older Macs. Again, our volunteer suggested to me to email the documents to himself, where he can open them on another Mac on a network or with a printer, or to open them up on his Windows computer (again letting his ISP do the conversion), and print. I'm not very Mac literate and none of the Mac volunteers offered to write the newsletter this month, so, If you've had any problems with, or any good suggestions for these types of Mac related activities, we'd like to know. Please email us at techinfo@crc.org. Thanks for reading! 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