You’ve endured many years with your clumsy laptop and now it’s time for an upgrade. Immediately you procure the perfect one that possesses all your required specs, you would find the old and the new sharing your conserved space. So, the question here is, what do you do with your old laptop? Would you love to recycle, sell, upgrade or donate it? Take your time to reflect on these available options!
Laptop Recycling and All You Should Know About the Process
Laptop recycling is simply explained as the dismantling and detachment of components and raw materials of waste electronics. However, before you recycle your old laptop, it is recommended that you do these five things:
- Save your personal files such as pictures, documents, music or videos to an external hard drive or upload them to the cloud.
- Destroy your hard drive or simply wipe it off. For privacy purpose, do not format because, it might not erase all your contained personal information on the drive.
- Look up if your school or workplace has an e-waste collection program.
- Make your research on where you are dropping off your laptop.
- Now it’s time to finally let go. Your old laptop has exhausted its usefulness to you.
You Can Sell your Old Laptop.
There is an established market for old tech. With Sell Laptop Back, Decluttr, Offer Up, LetGo, Craigslist, eBay and Facebook Marketplace, you shouldn’t have any problem with getting a buyer for your old laptop.
The advent of distinct online marketplaces has made it quite easy to sell your computer components conveniently.
However, whenever you sell your electronic device to an unknown person, ensure you take some necessary safeguards to protect your privacy.
Delete personal images, bank account information from your browsing history as well as browser cache on the system. We recommend that you remove your laptop’s hard drive before you sell it off or do a total wiping if you’re selling with the hard drive.
You Can Donate Your Old Laptop
Giving back is a nice thing. It is not a bad idea at all if you give out your used laptop to a family that is incapacitated to get a new one. A laptop is a valuable tool that will be appreciated.
If you are fine with giving your used laptop to a family less privileged to get a new one, the World Computer Exchange and few other organizations receives old laptops as donation.
According to the CEO of the NCF, Harry Rizer, a lot of school children today spend their nights at the library when given homework that has to be done online.
Nonetheless, you can still give your very old laptop a second life. In fact, you can even get a tax break for your donation.
You Can Upgrade Your Old Laptop
With a couple of tweaks, you can get your old laptop running faster. It is both expensive and difficult to upgrade MacBooks because of its soldered parts.
However, some other manufacturers’ models permit you to get an additional memory or substitute an old hard drive with a faster, more efficient SSD drives.
In addition, you can get enough information resource on iFixit to verify and certify if your device is upgradable and how to follow through the upgrade process.
