localzuk Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Why do staff complain about how slow computers are, and then as soon as they're replaced they want to know if they can have one of the old ones? Seriously, we've replaced a pile of 8 year old boxes this summer and we've had quite a few requests. To give an idea of their spec, think 8 year old celeron with 256Mb ram and onboard graphics. The benchmark scores they achieve wouldn't get past single digits. Why would someone want such an old, naff, machine? You can get 100x better machines on eBay or from Morgan computers etc... for less than £50. *confused*
pcstru Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Take advantage and sell it to them for a nominal amount!
calikit Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 That old machine goes from "piece of junk" to "magical freebie" as soon as you take it away. I've got people clamouring over a stack of eMacs with 128MB RAM and 1.6GHz PowerPC processors (at best). I try not to give stuff away because everyone then wants support, but my boss keeps offering them to people...
sted Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Why do staff complain about how slow computers are, and then as soon as they're replaced they want to know if they can have one of the old ones? Seriously, we've replaced a pile of 8 year old boxes this summer and we've had quite a few requests. To give an idea of their spec, think 8 year old celeron with 256Mb ram and onboard graphics. The benchmark scores they achieve wouldn't get past single digits. Why would someone want such an old, naff, machine? You can get 100x better machines on eBay or from Morgan computers etc... for less than £50. *confused* because their pay is so low they cant afford to buy their own pc? surely though if they are going to be skipped saves you the effort of disposal
sonofsanta Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Because teachers are like children and what they have is never good enough and what they can't have is magical and sparkly and will be the panacea for all their woes? Had a similar one here before the holiday - the English department here are, undoubtedly, the biggest moaners regarding computer speed (despite also being the department that uses them least) and yet a fortnight before we broke up they wanted to know if instead of throwing out all the old PCs we were replacing, could they have two at the back of each classroom please? We don't mind how slow they are, any computer will do, we'll put up with it! a) No you won't b) I won't c) at least have the decency to ask me directly instead of sending one of your teachers to ask one of my techies because you know what my answer will be
localzuk Posted August 23, 2012 Author Posted August 23, 2012 because their pay is so low they cant afford to buy their own pc? Sorry, don't believe that for a second. The teachers can definitely afford one. The cleaners etc...? The vast majority smoke, and have smart phones. They can afford a PC if they can afford that lot. surely though if they are going to be skipped saves you the effort of disposal No, they don't get skipped. They get taken for reuse or recycling by a WEEE registered organisation. Giving them away willy-nilly introduces a problem for the school in terms of proving they were legally disposed of.
Oaktech Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 (edited) I'm telling them that any PC they buy is supplied without hard drives or an operating system as we have to perform secure destruction on the info and the only way we can do that to the required standard (ie with a certificate of destruction) is to give them to our WEEE contractor. So far no-one has come back to me after the initial enquiry. Also... I'm telling anyone that asks for PCs for their classrooms that they will have to pay for additional infrastructure to support them, which is currently priced at £4000 to include, trunking, wall boxes, cabling, labour, a cabinet, a switch, and a fibre link to the nearest core switch. No takers yet. Edited August 23, 2012 by Oaktech 1
calikit Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 I'm telling them that any PC they buy is supplied without hard drives or an operating system as we have to perform secure destruction on the info and the only way we can do that to the required standard (ie with a certificate of destruction) is to give them to our WEEE contractor. So far no-one has come back to me after the initial enquiry. I'm stealing this line.
twin--turbo Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 We replaced all teacher laptops 18 months ago when we moved sites. Everyione was given the opportunity to purchase their old unit for £1 no mater what it was. If they did not have one they could not buy one. We stipulated that. THEY MUST remove the operating system and replace with their own. THEY MUST never come back and discuss them with us . WE WILL never provide any support. THEY CAN'T sell on, they must make final disposal via a WEE aproved recycling point. Some people still came back and asked us "About that laptop" ... To which we were blunt and said that they had signed a form saying they would not bother us. The whole point was to get rid of machines that would be a burden on us in our new facility. Seemed to work. if your staff are after class PC's tell them that any machine will haev it's disk wiped and that they would have to find and install an operting systemand application. And that there would be no support what so ever. That usualy puts them off. Rob
Steve21 Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 THEY MUST remove the operating system and replace with their own. THEY MUST never come back and discuss them with us . WE WILL never provide any support. THEY CAN'T sell on, they must make final disposal via a WEE aproved recycling point. Doesn't that officially come back on you though? Its your OS license that would get invalidated if they sell them on/don't delete the OSs etc. Steve
twin--turbo Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 They have signed a transferal ( including serial number ) for where they have agreed that they must remove the OS within a month. If they don't do that then they would personaly be commiting copy theaft. It's grey I admit. Rob
Earthling Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Whenever we replace the pc's here, we're always asked, on the quiet, if we can 'leave one in my pigeon-hole'. I think by that they mean, 'Can I have one of the old pc's you're replacing, please?'. It's always the same three or four teachers who ask and the reply is always the same.........'No, you can't'. It baffles me as to why they think that as soon as the pc's are replaced, because they're not fit for purpose anymore, that they're fit for purpose for home use. We've just installed a room full of i5's last Easter, and they're the *only* pc's we have here that I'd give house-room to. And before anyone asks.....'No, you can't have one when we replace them'.
localzuk Posted August 23, 2012 Author Posted August 23, 2012 They have signed a transferal ( including serial number ) for where they have agreed that they must remove the OS within a month. If they don't do that then they would personaly be commiting copy theaft. It's grey I admit. Rob You as an organisation don't have the right to offer that though. Your own copyright licenses will state that it can only be installed on machines owned by your organisation. As soon as they change ownership, you've allowed that to be installed on another machine, with a note or not. If you are going to give them away, you should really nuke the disk before giving it to them.
mthomas08 Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Why do staff complain about how slow computers are, and then as soon as they're replaced they want to know if they can have one of the old ones? Seriously, we've replaced a pile of 8 year old boxes this summer and we've had quite a few requests. To give an idea of their spec, think 8 year old celeron with 256Mb ram and onboard graphics. The benchmark scores they achieve wouldn't get past single digits. Why would someone want such an old, naff, machine? You can get 100x better machines on eBay or from Morgan computers etc... for less than £50. *confused* Strange that, we also get "Can this staff member have my old laptop".
CAM Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 You as an organisation don't have the right to offer that though. Your own copyright licenses will state that it can only be installed on machines owned by your organisation. As soon as they change ownership, you've allowed that to be installed on another machine, with a note or not. If you are going to give them away, you should really nuke the disk before giving it to them. Let alone all the personal and confidential information held on the disks from the computer's day-to-day usage, especially former admin machines. Even if you format the disk, unless you overwrite every sector with garbage data by doing a secure format you can still recover it.
twin--turbo Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Let alone all the personal and confidential information held on the disks from the computer's day-to-day usage, especially former admin machines. Even if you format the disk, unless you overwrite every sector with garbage data by doing a secure format you can still recover it. This was only for laptops they already had, any machine retured was killdisked before going for recycling. And the devices had no local storage option. Rob
SYNACK Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Another way to secure delete the contents, and cook the drive is to literally cook the drive. If you have a kilm or metalwork oven you can chuck them in there and it will wipe the magnetism by creating a phase change. Saves the hammer/saw etc. As to giving the machines away by the time ours are on the way out they are generally that bad that it is clear even to the staff that they are not worth bothering with.
twin--turbo Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 We had 650 machines to document & wipe and relocate all equipment from arround the site to a central collection point , allong with monitors, printers, whiteboard etc. in 3.5 days between four staff. We Set Killdisk going, moved to anotehr room, returned later and did the physical move. And we had new site stuff to get on with too... Some very late evenings and worn out bodies. Rob
Oaktech Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 We had 650 machines to document & wipe and relocate all equipment from arround the site to a central collection point , allong with monitors, printers, whiteboard etc. in 3.5 days between four staff. We Set Killdisk going, moved to anotehr room, returned later and did the physical move. And we had new site stuff to get on with too... Some very late evenings and worn out bodies. Rob Ouch. If it makes you feel any better we did a domain migration at the start of the holidays in a weekend almost from scratch, I say a weekend, but it was 42 hours, from Friday evening at 5 to 1am monday morning.
sidewinder Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 They have signed a transferal ( including serial number ) for where they have agreed that they must remove the OS within a month. If they don't do that then they would personaly be commiting copy theaft. It's grey I admit. Rob Ha, there's not a chance in hell any of them are going to remove that OS!
twin--turbo Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Ouch. If it makes you feel any better we did a domain migration at the start of the holidays in a weekend almost from scratch, I say a weekend, but it was 42 hours, from Friday evening at 5 to 1am monday morning. Our migration was going on at the same time from Novell ED & AD to new domain AD domain , new servers, new building , new everything.. Fortunatly that was mostly being handled for us but we needed to be in 4 places at once to clsoed down, transfer, build and open up. in a little under 2 weeks when most people were on christmas holidays. Fun times Rob
matt40k Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Biggest issue to do with selling\giving laptops, even bigger then data protection is VAT. School most likely didn't pay VAT (or paid it then reclaimed it), so if you sell it the tax man will be very interested... it's worth checking out. THEY MUST remove the operating system and replace with their own. I would image the OS license is OEM and came attached to the laptop. You can't transfer this. If you've say, it had Win7 Pro but only a Vista home or XP Home, you would need to wipe it. You can't expect people to do it. We had a lot of staff ask for their old laptop just cause they didn't want to transfer the data off it, when we explain it would get wiped no matter what, quite a few didn't bother. Personally, just recycle it either internally or a WEEE approved recycling point. The cost of doing it vs the money you'll get vs the risk if you mess it up doesn't make it worth it.
Oaktech Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 My previous employer (private sector) offered PCs to staff for between £100 and £50, but they were only a maximum of 2 years old and only just out of warranty. The hard drives on those were 7 passes of 0 and 1 overwritten to DoD spec and then loaded with a free flavour of linux it was up to the staff what they did after that. There was support available, but it was chargeable and taken directly from their wages by finance at £10 an hour!
Oaktech Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 Our migration was going on at the same time from Novell ED & AD to new domain AD domain , new servers, new building , new everything.. Fortunatly that was mostly being handled for us but we needed to be in 4 places at once to clsoed down, transfer, build and open up. in a little under 2 weeks when most people were on christmas holidays. Fun times Rob You guys deserve a medal!
SteveB_NI Posted August 23, 2012 Posted August 23, 2012 I got round that question here when removing old equipment... by removing from their rooms & getting it collected by the WEEE disposal company whilst they were blissfully unaware during the summer holidays
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