Call for salvaged hardware!

[Christopher Browne]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Maureen E.Thornton <maureen-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> How about putting out a general notice and seeing how many groups could
> send a representative to a gathering in the "Cafe".

Plausible...  I can imagine an objection, but that's David's to raise, or not...

> There is a ton of hardware out there.  Many companies just send it to
> the junk yard because they do not know how to dispose of it without
> costing an arm and a leg.  I have found two in the last two weeks.  Jon
> is going to put together something for me to use in order to show the
> companies what a good Samaritans they could be.

I don't want to be over-negative about this, but it's not all that
easy to dispose of elderly computers effectively/economically.

There are several problems that make it difficult for such enterprises
to be particularly economical:

- Enterprises needing to do disposal need to dispose of quite a lot of
hardware.  200 computers, 150 monitors, and such.

- For this to be a viable enterprise (and I am not assuming a
particular form of business organization; I don't think not-for-profit
versus for-profit changes the questions/answers essentially), it isn't
just a one time shot - they need to cope with this stuff coming in
100x per year.

- Transport and storage are both costly.  You need all of:
 a) Real estate to accommodate the hardware in compact piles,
 b) Real estate to represent a "work area",
 c) Truck(s) to do delivery
 d) Staff, available on demand, to bring piles of hardware in, and
move it between a), b), and c)
 e) Staff to [do something] with the hardware once it's there
 f) Presumably, some portion of the materials will need to get put
into another truck to go out somewhere else

When I lived in Texas, there was a place that did this; it had
low-cost, terribly-far-from-downtown, warehouse space, and they added
in g)

 g) Staffing and equipment for a "store front" operation which would
discount and sell, to the public, whatever was salable.

There's something of a mistake here, too, of assuming that the
materials are "interesting as computers," which is roughly the same
mistake people commonly make when thinking about places like Future
Shop.

People imagine that Future Shop is a "computer store," and imagine
some expectation that the staff ought to be competent computer
technology folk.

Take a step back...  Future Shop is *actually* in the business of
selling boxes.  They get boxes in, aboard transport trucks, have staff
that fork lift them onto shelves, and then draw down those boxes to
sell to customers.  The fact that it might be a computer (or an iPod
or a vacuum cleaner) is largely beside the point.  Their purpose is to
sell boxes.

A similarly cynical view applies fairly well to bookstores...  Most
bookstores are businesses that receive boxes full of objects that fit
nicely on shelves, and try to sell these objects as effectively as
they can.  Being a "book lover" isn't necessarily a useful attribute
for the staff at a Chapters outlet.

Back to the "old computer store"...  I can't see this reclamation
enterprise being of terribly much interest to "computer lovers" - the
economics of it discourage that.

I'm aware of one bookstore near home that suffers from something of
the opposite problem; "Books&Music&More" gets in a few boxes of books
each week, and the guy that operates it evidently hasn't seen a book
he doesn't like having in it.  You can't get to the back of the store,
and that means there's books he can't sell.

Practically, it is *essential* that he get rid of a kilogram of books
for every kilogram that is brought in.  Unfortunately, he's bringing
in books that others failed to sell, which means that there's two
strikes already against each and every one of the books.  And the
place is gradually turning into a fire hazard :-(.

A "computer reprocessing" place has a *huge* risk of falling into the
same problem.  And it quickly ceases to be "good Samaritans,"
transforming instead into "that crazy old lady who has 470 cats in her
apartment."  :-(
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