Ask HN: What do you do with your older hardware?

I sell them or give them away on website, https://www.finn.no/, a bit like Ebay.

Pretty much any functioning laptop will find a buyer if it is capable of running a modern web browser and in many cases there are enthusiasts willing to take hardware that can't even do that.

Over the past couple of years I have sold hundreds of bits of old computers ranging in age from five years old to 25 years old. Everything from ThinkPads to 20 year old power supplies taken from scrapped Compaq desktops and all the components in between including tape drives, DEC terminals, etc.

I also sold a non-functioning Quad 303 power amp for 1000 NOK (112 USD). Could perhaps have got more for it but as it hadn't cost me anything and it had been waiting for repair for over ten years it was a good price.

Someone will want your Mac mini, they just need to be able to find it. Put it on Ebay, Gumtree, Craigslist, Finn.no, or whatever your locality has.

Older laptops I throw Ubuntu LTS on and give to those in need.

Older desktops -- if not noisy gaming PCs -- become servers or get harvested for parts to bolster an existing one, otherwise they get donated or recycled.

> Piggybacking on this, but what's everyone doing with their 3g phones? My family has like 5 of them that will supposedly no longer have service in '22. Can we donate these somewhere? The newer ones can still install android apps, send and receive email, etc. I thought about donating them to a shelter but I'm not sure if they'd have a use for them.

What would a homeless person do with a phone that can't connect to a cellular network?

Obsolete tech eventually becomes practically useless, even if it "still works." At this point, I'd say 3G phones are a (very small) white elephant, mainly only useful for weird hobbyist stuff or quirky retrocomputing.

I knew a refugee who was given a 68k Mac laptop in about 2003, it was more of a burden than anything. It was impossible to get online with anything close to a then-modern browser (IIRC, too little memory). It made a lot more sense for him to just use one of the computer labs.

Sell it back to Apple, or recycle it through them. They're best placed to recycle it as they know all the components and materials. Anyone else recycling it will probably just ship it to another country to go into landfill.

Download a bunch of MP3s that you don't like, get cheap long USB cords, and set them up as programmable musical alarm clocks.

(Why music that you don't like? Because any music that forces you to wake up will eventually become music you don't like.)