Re: Market for Vintage Macs?

From: Fred Lotte (flotte_at_nospam.stratos.net)
Date: 09/11/04 

Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:21:41 -0400

In article <sorry-063733.06481210092004@netnews.comcast.net>,
 Moocatdog <sorry@nospam.com> wrote:

> You might check with your local school district to see if they need old
> Macs, if even only for parts. I am always suprised by how eagerly my
> neighborhood school accepts donations. I give them my old computers,
> software, printers, monitors, cables, etc. and they treat me like a
> major philanthropist. In addition to a warm, fuzzy feeling, you'll
> likely receive a tax deduction worth as much or more than what you might
> earn by selling on eBay, without the hassle.
> Just a thought,
> Moo :-)

On occasion, I volunteer at the local PC user group's hardware sig when
the get some of 'those Macs' donated (I'm not a member of the group).
Over the past 3-4 years I have restored a few dozen LC II & III as well
as some newer models. These have mostly gone to local schools. I loaded
them with the last free system (7.5.5 I think) and freeware like BBEdit.
As Moocatdog points out, the schools are overjoyed.

Just this past week the group received about a dozen slot loading iMacs
that a local business replaced with Dell something or other (where's the
Apple sales department?). They did not get the system disks or any other
software. They should have been able to get OS 9.x that the machines
were delivered with and some version of OSX 10.2.x since the machines
appear to have OSX 10.2.8.

I REPEAT:

THE MACHINES WERE DONATED WITHOUT THE SYSTEM DISKS OR ANY SOFTWARE!!!!!

It's the group's practice to wipe the HD clean to some MIL spec and load
an operating system. My PC centric friends have some type of deal from
Bill himself that allows them to load some version of Windose on about a
thousand old Intel machines a year which are given to schools and
churches. They are clueless when it comes to Apple and don't know that
the software situation is changing almost daily and a donated machine
may not be able to use the currently available OS.

The group doesn't have the money to buy an OS for donated machines and,
since Apple no longer seems to provide key legacy OS's for free, these
machines may be useless... actually worse than useless since they take
up a lot of space (they have Windose boxen stacked eye high, you can't
stack iMacs).

My reason for writing this is to point out that:

IF YOU DONATE THE MACHINE, AT LEAST DONATE THE SOFTWARE THAT CAME WITH
IT and any upgrades that you no longer need!!!!!!

I could write more but my blood pressure is too high from just this ;-) 

-- 
Fred Lotte
flotte@nospam.stratos.net

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