Of Crashed PCs, Surplus and Sustainability

In my previous blog, I mentioned my PC crashing.   My Dell Latitude D600 died on me.  Hopefully I get it to run again but in the meantime I need a computer to work on.  Thanks to my wife, who offered the use of her credit card (mine is quite loaded), I went off to search for another virtual world workhorse.   We go to HMR Envirocycle in Daystar Industrial Park, Santa Rosa, Laguna.  If don't know where that is, that's right in front of  Toyota Gate 1 along the Tagaytay-Sta.Rosa road.  If you still don't know where that is, then look it up in google earth.  Anyway,  we enter the showroom, suddenly my wife's face begins to brighten! She tells me its like doing garage sales in Arizona...WOW! So like a kid( with 2 kids behind her) she explores the store. She looks at desktops, flat screen panels, laptops, toys, furniture.   She ends up buying an ACER LCD display for PHP5990 and a scrapbooking tote for PHP990.   Together we look at the laptops, it was a choice between an IBM Thinkpad T30 and a Compaq EVO N610c.   We compared features, price, leading to our purchase of the Compaq for PHP17900.00 It should have been PHP15900 but this unit had an 80GB HDD! 

When we got home, I started installing xp.  At first it was quite frustrating because the pc would shutdown with every installation.  Then I remembered stuff when I used to work for Intel.  This laptop ran on a 2.4GHz P4m, a hot engine for a laptop as opposed to the 1.4 GHz centrinos.  So I started doing my installation in a cooler room,  with nothing obstructing the fan inlet/ outlet.  Hallelujah!  My PC was alive!  

Later I discover my PC didn't have an 80GB HDD.  It was showing only 28GB!  So I went to HMR and let them know of my problem.  Turns out, the sales people mistakenly thought the unit had 80GB. They replace my unit with one that had 40GB.  As for the extra PHP2000  I paid. They gave me a receipt acknowledging my overpayment.  They will be crediting this to my next purchase.

I'm now using my laptop to write this blog and so far so good...It is important that we use surplus items when we can considering the natural resources that were used in making these.  If we don't all these PCs, TVs, etc. end up in landfills. The heavy metals and toxic pollutants would then contaminate our water supply.  We then ingest these things one way or the other.  Either by us drinking these or by the seafood we eat.   So the next time you buy surplus, you are making sure that the next generation has a healthier life.