Tag Archives: Computer Refurbishing

Jim Lynch, all around great guy, and TechSoup Global GURU, wrote a great article yesterday called Environmental Case for Refurbished IT Equipment. In this article Jim presents a really good case for reusing old computer equipment instead of recycling it (having it broken down). Instead of re-arguing what Jim’s already covered I thought I’d touch on another reason why refurbishing old equipment might be better than ditching it for less power-hungry equipment.

For the past several years companies have been slinging around the term “Green” for a lot of their equipment. We have green hard drives, green power supplies, green notebooks, etc. In some cases this might mean something as simple as running at 7200RPM instead of 10,000 RPM. In other cases it refers to an eco-friendly manufacturing process from start to finish.

So why keep something that might draw more power alive when more green alternatives exist? One thought comes to mind right off the top – quality. If you’ve been in the industry awhile you remember when manufacturers started flooding the market with cheap Winmodems instead of hardware modems. Winmodems were cheaper to manufacture, did a reasonable job on Windows, but were a bit of a pain under other operating systems. Today we see a lot of cheap laptops. At $250-$400 a pop they seem to be flooding the market. My wife and I bought our son one. The quality of these laptops, compared to say a Lenovo T410, is very poor. It’s almost as if manufacturers are pushing out notebooks they only expect to last a year or two. They may use better energy conservation technology, but they seem built to break.

Remember the old Toshiba commercial where the guy forgets the laptop on the hood of his car? The car takes off and the laptop crashes to the ground but doesn’t break… it’s not the situation today, especially at the low end of the laptop spectrum. Materials in some of these notebooks are so cheap that something as simple as trying to unscrew a screw on the bottom causes plastic inside to break. The solution is simple, manufacturers should be using a small metal bolt to prevent the plastic thread from breaking.

I’ve also noticed our son’s cheap notebook (he has a better quality one too) tends to overheat a lot. It runs really hot and sometimes shuts down because of a heat event, and this notebook is only around 6 months old.

New technology might be more energy efficient, but if the shelf life is a lot less then it’s creating more of an environmental problem rather than less. Sure, new technology can be refurbished, but there comes a point where really cheap equipment requires a machine to replace components (or an incredibly talented soldering expert).