Picking up PC's that people have dumped by the skips at work

we throw out servers and desktops most years, but leave them in a room off the lobby with an e-mail the same day to staff asking if they want something, just take it. I'd say about 20% is taken and the rest is then thrown in the WEEE skip. Obviously all the drives are removed!
 
I've sorted my parents out with a perfectly good internet PC via the same method. My media hub pc attached to my living room TV is put together from other people's cast offs. It feels good to find a free solution.
 
See if they've logged on to Facebook and not logged out. Profit??? :D

My dad used to get old hardware that wasn't that old but just been upgraded for free from his work's recycling yard, got some cool stuff from there.

I've gotten lots of things from my workplace though, laptops, gigabit switches and things - It helps being the IT admin when things get upgraded, you have first dibs :D
 
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Whilst in my previous job I made some decent money via grabbing and selling some PC's that were being thrown out. Bought myself a Blu Ray Player and Timberlands amongst other things ;)
 
Are you allowed to sell something you have taken?

Recycle, yes. Sell :/
 
Our old kit is *very* throroughly scrubbed then donated to charity.

When our servers are decomissioned though, they get utterly destroyed. Shame really - we're about to switch one off with 16 [dual core] CPUs, 100Gb ram and about 15Tb storage. Would make quite a nice media server.
 
Ergates said:
Our old kit is *very* throroughly scrubbed then donated to charity.

When our servers are decomissioned though, they get utterly destroyed. Shame really - we're about to switch one off with 16 [dual core] CPUs, 100Gb ram and about 15Tb storage. Would make quite a nice media server.
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I guess it would be nice having that amount of storage, it would probably cost an arm and a leg in electricity with that many CPU's...
 
Matthew-1985 said:
Why destroy the whole thing and not just the hard drives? :confused: :(
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Rules is rules.

If they can't get reused within the estate they get nuked*. Even reuse isn't common as we are contractually obligated to keep the tin within a certain level of support - stuff that's being decomissioned is generally about to drop out of support which means we can't use it.
 
The dump local to me regularly has 5-6 base units sitting there, mostly celerons.
I've picked up a full tower (minus HD) outside some posh flats once, it's going to be my next fileserver :)
 
vonhelmet said:
Pretty sure that once it's in a skip or bin it belongs to the people who collect the rubbish.
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Not totally sure on this, but pretty sure that taking stuff from a skip is technically theft...

Don't quote me on that though, laws change all the time...

Either way, good find. :)
 
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