Printed from www.pcpro.co.uk
Posted on February 3rd, 2009 by Stuart Turton
Goodwill PC won’t be rubbish after all… unfortunately
As the £250 challenge rumbles to its conclusion, the machines my rivals have managed to assemble for this princely sum have started rolling into the office. I must admit to a little PC envy, given that it looks as if I’ll be building my machine out of bad news, false hope and rejection. None of which is going to gift me the six months of victory gloating I so crave.
Just for those who don’t know, I don’t have £250 to spend. I don’t have anything to spend. Not a sausage. Which is lucky because you can’t spend sausages and would look very silly trying. My task is to deliver a PC to Tim for free.
I wrote recently about my travails on sharing site Freecycle, but at the back of my mind I wasn’t panicking because I had a masterplan. I say masterplan. I had a dump. Not even a dump. The promise of a dump. I envisioned myself clambering over mountains of PC bits, snatching sticks of DDR3 RAM from toothless beggars – no idea why – and generally constructing a supercomputer from other people’s foolishly discarded detritus.
What I hadn’t counted on was bureaucracy. This morning I rang my local council to sort out my foraging trip, only to be told by a nice chap on the other end that once those lovely, if slightly broken, PCs pass the recycling centre gates they’re officially the property of the council. It’s illegal to remove them. The reasons are obvious. Under the wonderful WEEE directive, which was established to make sure electrical items are disposed of in an environmentally friendly way, the council can charge PC manufacturers for every item they recycle. If I took one away, they might as well open their wallet so I can steal a tenner.
It’s an interesting problem. WEEE is intended to encourage proper recycling, but the best kind of recycling is reuse, which it discourages with a financial motivation. All of which puts paid to my dump hopes needless to say. On the bright side, the nice chap from the council did offer some advice on where I might find a free PC… Freecycle. Brilliant.
Tags: Goodwill PC, The challenge
Posted in: Random
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15 Responses to “ Goodwill PC won’t be rubbish after all… unfortunately ”
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February 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Did you consider purchasing a refurbished PC ?
February 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am
oi wakey wakey! Read your blog comments and come and take away some boat-anchors from my basement!
February 4th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Wish I could, but the glare of Tim prevents it. Rules state I’ve got to use methods that anybody on the street could follow. Nipping down to your basement, while making my life considerably easier, would unfortunately contravene those.
February 4th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
ah but if the machine was to be deposited in the recycling pile jsut at the moment you happened to be visiting then you would be able to return with not just a slipped disc, but facial abrasions from fighting with the Colombian Cleaners that haunt my car-park, thereby proving your equal-opportunity status.
’cause that’s where this thing is going…
February 4th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
How about testing some of these too-good-to-be true-must-surely-be-a-scam sites…if any of them are for real you’d get another article out of it as well!
http://www.free-stuff.me.uk/free/computers/laptops/
February 4th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
The stance taken by the council’s recycling policy is ludicrous. I’ve seen perfectly decent PCs at my local tip and they would make very adequate internet-browsing boxes at the very least.
A sure sign the EU creates more problems than it solves.
February 5th, 2009 at 9:30 am
If you want to rummage around a whole lot of free PC bits, we have loads, all stored in a 20ft container waiting to be sent off for WEEE disposal. This costs my company money, so the more bits you wish to take out for re-use, the happier I am. You are more than welcome to forrage!
February 5th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Would love to Jonh, but unfortunately I’m handcuffed by the rules of the game. I have to use a method, anybody on the street could replicate.
Cheers though,
Stu
February 5th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Stuart,
I accept i may have completely missed the point, but couldn’t one of the methods anyone can use be posting in a forum asking the community for donations of any disused components? therefore making a number of these basement offers valid? For instance, the pc pro forums are a good community as are a number of the other forums i take residence in
I know if i was looking for spare parts i’d be posting in various forums. I know a lot of people (myself included) have old components kicking around the house that were removed because of upgrades etc that i have never gotten rid of on the “just in case” premise. Also i really hate binning anything that is still useable, i mean heck i still have my old acorn electron kicking around with loads of old tapes for it.
Just my 2 cents, really hope you manage to make some serious headway with the challenge
February 5th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Interesting point hj – I reckon you’re probably on to something, but given that I work for the mag it seems slightly unethical for me to be asking our readers for free stuff. It’d be an interesting experiment, to see if somebody well established on a forum could build a PC for free from other people’s cast offs. Given our readership, I’m pretty sure you could build something monstrous.
Thanks for the support, though. Hopefully I’ll have something to show you guys in a few days.
February 6th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
At our local recycling place the lovely men in orange appear to have a range of items for sale. Worth going to ask, mind you if you don’t have some cash maybe not…
February 8th, 2009 at 3:13 am
Why not use a false name? Perhaps slightly unethical but in cyberspace who are we but names on a screen? And certainly anyone would be able to replicate that
Unless someone only gives your false identity something because they’ve read this and suspect it’s really you…
February 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Hi,
what started out as definitely as good idea was scuppered by your being honest and asking the council to do the “right thing”. Derr ! What did you expect ?
Anyways, as stated above, the secret is to work out what day the container full of “broken”/unwanted PCs leaves the recycling plant, then turn up the day before with some of your old bits. Hang around, mooch about, put things in your car boot, but do not ask for permission.
I recently bagged a P4 3.2 GHz desktop from Packard Bell already loaded with Windows XP Pro and someones family photos.
Also you might consider a firm which manages hardware for businesses. They often rip out PCs and replace them with new ones when the “broken” item will take longer than 10 minutes to fix. Oh hum. Effluent society it is then !
March 1st, 2009 at 12:00 pm
refurbished pc…
That was very interesting to me but while I think about it please check out my site I have been working on lately…
April 2nd, 2010 at 12:56 pm
If they were to give you a pc then there is the risk that someone hadnt removed personal data from the hard drive. Also if they were to give away waste, someone got it home then fly tipped as it didnt work then its a vicous circle. The council has a duty of care to treat the waste as waste!