I was sorting through boxes of old electronic devices this week. Laptops. Cell phones. iPods. iPads. Cameras. And an incredible assortment of wires. Each time my wife, our kids or I would purchase new devices, the old ones would go in this box. I hung on to them because, well, I just might use them someday. That day has never come, so now I have to figure out what to do with decades of this stuff.
I am most intrigued with the cameras. Nearly 30 years ago, I published an automotive photo magazine, and I took thousands of pictures of vehicles with a 35mm film camera. The process of how we developed film, made prints and prepared the pages for press is laughable now — and so is the camera. But I still have it, along with an array of the earliest of digital cameras that we experimented with and a handful of video cameras, too. Who would have guessed that we would someday carry around phones that have cameras much better than any of these devices and that we would keep hundreds of images stored on them — and in something we would call “the cloud”?
I also found my fourth generation iPod with the click wheel. It won’t take a charge anymore, but I keep thinking I might find a way to make it work. A bunch of my kids’ iPod Minis are also packed in the box — in a variety of colors and tangled in a mess of wired earbuds.
The laptops are the clunkiest of the items. I remember having my first one — an Apple PowerBook 100 with a 9-inch black-and-white screen and a “trackball pointing device.” That was a $2,500 computer in the early 1990s. I thought I was high tech. The devices I am blowing the dust off now certainly have more features than the PowerBook 100, but they are still useless today — unless you need a really heavy paperweight. Or 10.
So how do I safely get rid of these things? Some say to soak them in water. Start them on fire. Smash them with a hammer. But then do what with the remains? The better option is to wipe, remove or shred the hard drives so the data thieves can’t access your social security number, credit cards, bank accounts and website logins and passwords. Then find a company or organization that does computer recycling or contact city hall in the town where you live and ask about any services provided.
Or you can throw them in a box with years of other devices… just in case you might need them someday.
Have a wonderful Wednesday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305 | 
