Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Doing the right thing for the right reasons... in the wrong way

I have littered about the place a hefty collection of essentially worthless grey boxes. Partly it is because I have this odd notion that I may one day have a use for an extra 1GB of storage lurking in an entire CPU, but mainly I am still unsure what to do about them.

The ideal of course is that I get some money. Well, forget that. For a start, as mentioned, they are essentially worthless. So next up is that they get reused. Or at very worst recycled. These latter involve donation, which I am happy to do, but then we come to a bit of an issue, and one that is more than a tad topical: security.

This of course has provoked a response from those with a vested interest in the business of discarded IT. One such we have just been happy to print on our very own pages, reassured by the defence of its service (noting in passing the double-edged sword of Google Adsense, which has ads on the same page for services that may or may not be as worthy - caveat emptor).

But one thing I do note is that to get the reassurance one needs, you need to pass off in excess of 20 units.

Now most idividuals, and even small SMEs, do not have such numbers. What can one do? Is there a similar service for single units? Is it as secure? Can it be sustainable for the reuser without being financially prohibitive for the disposer? And if not, is the council 'bin' any more secure?

Quite an issue.

One notion I have is using the localisation capability of Junkk.com to pool diverse individuals in a coalition of the willing that builds to the trigger level, at which point the units are pooled (centrally would involve storage, at least temporarily, and possibly transport commitments) ready for collection.