Donated Laptops Go Through More Than a Cleanup Before Reaching Their Next Owners
A donated laptop does not get a quick wipe and a new home by Friday. At established refurbishing nonprofits, it is logged by serial number, has its storage erased and verified, and gets tested part by part. Only then is it repaired, reloaded, and handed on, while machines that fail along the way are stripped […]
The Used Laptop for Sale May Have Been Retired by a Company, Not Worn Out
The spare laptop on my desk still has a silver sticker on the bottom that reads “Property of” followed by the name of a university IT department. I paid $140 for it at a campus surplus sale five years ago, and it has outlived two newer laptops since. Before a charity can offer similar hardware […]