Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ToonyMan]

You know what's sad?

My shop instructor said that all old computers that are replaced are destroyed.  Destroyed.  They just completely make them scrap.  I want to know why the hell they do this.

[cowofdoom78963]

Yeah they all get thrown in the trash. Ive heard in some cases they sell some though.

Its such a waste, people could use those.

[Duke 2.0]

 There isn't much use for computer parts from a machine with 600Mhz speed and 450 Megabytes of RAM with a 8 Gig hard drive.

 Although there are a bunch of more recent computers that would be a tragedy to destroy. And I can imagine schools destroying them as they try to replace them with sleeker-looking new machines with flat screens and ergonomic keyboards.

[ToonyMan]

No they weren't bad.

[cowofdoom78963]

There isn't much use for computer parts from a machine with 600Mhz speed and 450 Megabytes of RAM with a 8 Gig hard drive.

It's not very good but someone could probably find use for it.

[Little]

There isn't much use for computer parts from a machine with 600Mhz speed and 450 Megabytes of RAM with a 8 Gig hard drive.

America's school system could build an epic botnet with all the computers they discard. 

[Gunner-Chan]

It depends. Really really old pentuim 2 computers really aren't much good for anyone, they really don't have a use anymore when they'll choke on most web pages. Unless you wanted to make an old dos machine but Dosbox is quickly making that use redundant.

More modern computers in schools usually end up donated instead of throwing though, the college here gave it's computers to the highshool recently after an upgrade.

[Aqizzar]

Who then send their computers on to middle schools, and down on to elementary schools.  Which was why my elementary school was still using Apple IIe's as they entered The Year Two Thousand.

Not to mention they'd need some amount of decent processor power to do anything like useful surveillance with a webcam.

[DJ]

I think schools in 3rd world countries could use Pentium 2s.

[Cthulhu]

If they have electricity.

[ToonyMan]

The computers they got rid of were Pentium III processors with 512 MB of RAM I believe.

The hard drive was only like 40 GB though.  Don't bother with a graphics card.

[cowofdoom78963]

Thats better then what I have.

[LegoLord]

What bothers me is that after trying to discipline a student for something they couldn't have known about without the spy software, and being sued by that student, someone on the school side tried to deny that they were spying on students.  At least if I'm reading the last portion of the article correctly.

[cowofdoom78963]

They wanted to know where the laptop was.

[MrWiggles]

If they have electricity.

I think schools in 3rd world countries could use Pentium 2s.

Electricity isn't the concern. They're retrofits with extremely bulky hand cracked capacitors. The real issue is theft. The laptop drive advert tv, about 'win a laptop give a latop' use biometrics and set for the entire family to use, to make it mostly useless to someone else, suppose be pretty hard to pry open as well.
The invasion of privacy  of a private home is horrible, though the user of the laptop could have their privacy right waived if it was apart of the agreement of the laptop  for anything done on the laptop.

Outside that, this is awesome that school are starting to do so. Public school are suppose to prep us with basic skills in order to function in tomorrow society. (This is why they had/have shop class and home econ.) That right now means computer skills, being computer illiterate is an extreme handicap. I knew that schools through the country for elementary were dropping teaching cursive and started typing courses, but this is much better. Computer literacy only comes from active use.