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So you bought that shiney new computer, but what are you going o do with your old computer? There are actually a lot of options but, most people end up just throwing it out. I want to provide some better suggestions than putting it in a landfill and many of these options can help you in the long run.

1. Run Linux

I have said how much Linux has grown recently and has become a viable contender in the operating system marketand why not give it a try, since you already have the old computer. Then you will know what all the fuss over Linux is about

2. Home Server

Another option, is setting the old computer up as a home server where you can server files, stream music and backup data. The easiest way of acheieving this is to run FreeNas and install that which will make all the modificatiojns needed to turn your old junker into a awesome home server.

3. Media Center

A old PC would also make a good media center which will allow you to a lot more in your living room. First, you can play web-content like podcasts and videos over your big TV and fully enjoy it. You can also play music over your home sound system and surf the web on your big screen. Finally, you could buy a TV capture card and turn that computer into a Digital video record and watch your favorite shows anytime, anywhere.

4. Donate your Processing Power

You can install a program called Folding@home and donate your processing power to research and help cure cancer and many other important issues.

5. Turn it into a Hardware Firewall

If you have several computers and why worry about running software firewalls on each one when with one more network interface card, you can install SmoothWall and put the firewall on your network and not have to bother with running software on each machine and still stay safe from hackers.

6. Donate it!

As the administrator of a church computer lab whose computers were all donated, I can not stress enough how helpful donations are. If you don’t want yout old computer laying around your home and want to give3 it to people who need it check your local churches, schools, and other non-profit organizations because they can really use them.

7. Sell it online!

If the computer is still functioning you  can sell it online, it may not make you rich but, it could definitly get you some money towards a new computer.

8. Sell if for Parts

If you have a few working parts, and the skill to disassemble a computer, then you could make some money off selling your computer for parts. You will be amazed how desperate people are if their computer breaks and how much they are willing to pay for a replacement part, especially if the parts are rare.

9. Recycle It

If all else fails, take it to a recycling center that can properly dispose of the parts and minimize the impact on the economy.

I hope this article helped everyone decide what they should do with their computer and hopefully get even more out of them.

People have been talking about going paperless for a while now that computers have made paper near-obsolete and make organization much easier than having a filing cabinet full of folders with papers. Paper takes up space and is hard to search through when there is too much of it, and it kills tree to make more paper to print on and it becomes a vicious cycle and polluting the environment not to mention disposing of paper when it is used although many people recycle rather than just trashing up but, tthat also takes fossil fuels and energy to do and would be a lot easier to store most of your information on your computer.

The most important technology in going paper free is the PDF format because it is very universal and easy to read on any system and the files are small enough in size to transfer. I also reccommend getting a PDf printer like CutePDFWriter or if you have a Mac or Linux it is built in to the print menu and lets you save information to your local machine instead of printing them onto paper. This will increase as hard drive capacity increases and price decrease so people can get larger and larger hard drives for their machines and can store all their documents. I have recently been doing this print to PDf with invoices of purchases and have save the time of prinitng and storing a piece of paper that I will hopefully never need again. Going paperless not only saves paper and space but, also increases security because if you store in a filing cabinet or even in a safe locks can be cracked while on a hard drive encryption is much more difficult to break and although possible it is much more difficult the picking a lock.

I think that on Earthb Day going paperless is something everyone should take into consideration and because of that people should start utlizing PDfs and digital files instead of physical paper and although there are some problems with hard drives breaking backing up can easily solve that problem and help save the environment one page at a time.

In this modern age, people want to stay up-to-date with their electronics, and because of that, many feel the need to buy the newest product, as soon as they come out.  This leaves many old gadgets un-used an in many cases thrown away into dumps and pollute the environment and takes up landfill space. It is because it has become part of the modern lifestyle that we need the newest gadgets to be popular and leave many gadgets wasted even though they still may have life in them.

There are several methods of aiding this problem which can help the environmental and wastefulness aspect of the issue. First,  people can be more conservative of what they buy, as in only buy things that they truly need or if thy want make sure they don’t need something else that already does that before buying a new product. If you do buy a new product, then one thing you could do is sell your product to a friend or online that way you can cover a part of the cost of the new product and you can give it to someone who can use it and still get good use out of it. You could do this on Ebay, Amazon or another site you could use is Gazelle which buys and sells used electronics.   The other option is you can give your gadget to a recycling company ithis is good if the gadget is not worth much or is broken they can atleast recycle it properly.

In conclusion, be careful with buying because it all has an impact on the environment and if it is unnessesary, then don’t get it. Otherwise, if you do buy a new product, then you can  either sell it online or give it to a recylcing company that will dispose of it properly. If we do not take these steps, then we could further pollute our environment and ruin it for the people of the future.