Too many PCs!!!

What do you do with your old PCs when you build or buy a new one?

Do you keep them for other things? Try to sell them on ebay or other places? Give them to friend's or relations, store them away somewhere just in case you might need them later? or just throw them away?

I know some people only ever have one PC and just upgrade it when needed, using the same case and harddrives, and replacing the motherboard, CPU, graphics card etc, and then selling the older stuff on ebay. Are you one of those? I've never been one to do that. I tend to build a new PC from the beginning each time, meaning I end up with one more PC each time. And even when I reuse a good case for a new system I tend to end up buying another case to then house the old hardware!

The problem I have is that I'm sentimental. If I've had a PC as my main system for a couple of years it has some great memories and was built and configured well to be stable and reliable, and was used daily. And therefore I find it really hard to part with. A bit like the reason we are all still holding on to our retro hardware and Amigas I suppose.

But I'm now getting too many PCs that are just never being used. And I even now have two complete PC setups without cases that are pretty good spec and in good working order, because I had to remove them to reuse the cases for newer systems.

The other problem is that some of the very old PCs are just not worth anything to anyone any more. I still have my Pentium 2 system that I originally purchased for over £2000 in 1998 and was used as my main system until 2002. That was a great system at the time that lasted me well, and even after 2002 it was still used as a download server and was running 24/7 without a problem. But now it is never used. It sits in the corner of a closet collecting dust. It's probably not even worth the postage costs to most people, but to me it was a great system with loads of memories, that served me very well through university and for design work after leaving, and I'm not sure I could just throw any fully working PC out just because it is old and out of date hardware wise.

One idea I have just had is to create a little blog with a history of my computers on it. With pictures and details, plus my personally memories and experiences of using them. It wouldn't really be for people to read that much. More a way to retain the memory of the older systems. Then I probably would be OK with getting rid of the ones I definitely don't use any more. I've been wanting to create a blog for some time now to include things I'm interested in, and some sections on useful stuff, like how to configure 1and1 servers.

I keep what might come in useful and either offer on freecycle or goto the local recycling centre.

I usually keep them, but don't change PCs very often, so I don't have a lot of spare ones. Last week I set one up for my girlfriend, a 2.4GHz P4. She didn't have one, only used her iPhone so far :)

I'm on my third PC now, and will probably build the fourth soon. The remains of my two older ones are still sitting in a corner here. The oldest is largely complete minus HDs, a Targa with a Celeron processor and I think it was a TNT2 graphics card. It was a dirt cheap thing even when it was new, I was on a tight budget back then. The second is also complete only missing HDs I think. This was a semi-selfbuild, I had the guy at the place I ordered it pick out the parts based on what I was willing to spend, and then I put it together myself. Don't even remember what processor it has, but there's definitely an ATI 9800 Sapphire card in there.

Don't plan on throwing either away anytime soon. The plan was to make one a DOS based machine and the other a Win98 unit to run older software on real hardware. But I don't know if I'll ever actually get around to it.

I have a couple of PCs other than my main one. One of them doesn't work, but the other one is likely to come in useful in the near future, so I certainly don't want to chuck it out (and I didn't pay for it either).

Otherwise, I bet you can all guess what my main PC is, which has had pride of place on my desk for quite a few years now.

I am very tempted to get something a bit newer. Possibly see if I can get something from around 2003/4 time as that was the time when I last really looked into computer specifications. I wouldn't get rid of this 1999 Dell though as it is still a nice computer and I'm sure it will be useful in the future. It was also my first brand new computer and has given many years of service so it probably wouldn't appreciate being thrown out.

10 years using a PC as your main system is something to be proud of, and highlights something. Computer components used to be stronger than they are now. My old 1998 P2 system used to be running nearly all day when it was in constant use, and once it wasn't my main system any longer it was then on all the time downloading, and it never went wrong once. I can't say the same about newer system hardware. Since 2005 I've had two PSU's die on me, and kill the motherboards along with them.

Personally though, I couldn't have still managed with a system built 10 years ago. I know you are not really a gamer Steve so that is one reason you haven't had the need to upgrade. You are also not into graphic design or video post production, so again the same applies.

It also highlights the point I've made in the past that most home uses that don't play games don't need a computer anywhere near the current spec of PCs sold today. How many people who just use a computer for email, word processing and accessing websites need a dual core CPU, 2GB or ram and a 160GB HDD? None in my view, but that is at the very bottom of current PC specs beiing sold. All such users need is the little Atom powered net PCs.

I'm a little bit mentalist in this respect!
I keep all my old PCs ..... they're in the garage as we speak.

I've sold the odd one or two, to supplement getting better Amigas and upgrades for my A1200 etc. but most of my PCs are still present (apart from those that died, which I canableised for parts)