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Dell currently offers consumers no-charge recycling of any brand of used computer or printer with the purchase of a new Dell computer or printer. This service includes home pick-up of the used computer at no charge.
Under its new policy, Dell will provide consumers no-charge recycling of any Dell-branded product, regardless of whether a replacement product is purchased. The company plans to launch the service in the U.S. by September, and globally by November [source].
The Dell that Ash owned recently died. Well, not exactly but the fan went kaput and it overheated each time almost to the point of bursting into flames (it really happens!). So finally she has seen the light and is getting a Thinkpad. But the problem of disposing the Dell remains. Thankfully, news just got out of Round Rock, TX that Dell will be offering to expand its recycling program to non-returning customers. However, make sure that you wipe your disk clean or even retain your HDD drive to avoid personal information falling into the wrong hands. Nothing better than a dead but green computer.
by Patrix | on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 5:55 pm | 
Environment, Sustainability, Technology . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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July 6th, 2006 at 8:36 pm reply
If you can erase the hard-disk, then why not keep it? You could always use a handy USB backups. I did that to my trashed notebook’s disk.
You can get a $10 casing with USB cable (I’ve got the pic somewhere on my flickr stream, can’t find right now). You can insert the notebook drive in the casing, screw it up with the given two tiny phillips screws, and plug the USB cable in and you have a mobile USB backup drive (that you can carry in your backpack). The drive draws power directly from USB, so you don’t need power chords or anything.
July 7th, 2006 at 1:29 pm reply
Chetan, is it that easy and inexpensive? I still have a 6GB HDD from my old laptop. I tried looking up docking stations which turned out to be quite expensive. I have got a 160GB external HDD now.
BTW my USB ports have gone kaput…any fixes?
July 7th, 2006 at 9:01 pm reply
Yes, it really is. The casing comes with connectors on the inside that match those of the notebook hard disk. The casing also comes with some padding.
There are a few varieties, so it would help if you can carry it to the shop like CompUSA or something and tell them. (Here’s how mine looks like: http://flickr.com/photos/chetan/26455862/). HDD used is from my burnt out notebook.
For USB ports, I don’t know about notebooks, they are rather too tightly integrated for my taste (may require soldering work, I hate doing it, if at all I can). But on desktops, it’s fairly easy: if your onboard (motherboard) USB ports are not working, just install a PCI card with USB ports in one of the free slots in your desktops (http://flickr.com/photos/chetan/86390510/).
July 8th, 2006 at 3:34 pm reply
Chetan, thanks for that link. I’ll probably try it out. My current laptop has also gone kaput and so I’ll be using its 40GB HDD to generate additional storage (to store what? I dunno that yet).
After the dust clears, I should be possessing almost 266GB (not including CDs and the iPod) of storage space but hey, I don’t want to say anything on the lines of “640kb ought to be enough for everyone” (remember that one?).
July 8th, 2006 at 4:07 pm reply
[...] I should have known that fragile equipment such as computers and cars have astounding listening powers. Almost hours after I made the post on recycling laptops by Dell, my own laptop decided that it would be a great to try out that program. After innocently trying to update my video driver (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500) and wireless adapter (Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B), I got the blue screen of death. [...]