I am slowly coming to accept that my value set was molded when certain things were scarce, and no longer are. I would have been thrilled to get any kind of computer when I was in high school. So it is hard for me to imagine people willing to throw away _any_ computer. But now I am starting to see that XT's and 286's are like paper cups. Not only do they tend to work less well as they age (they eventually break and lack support from their manufacturers), but they are really next to valueless in terms of replacement cost. Even if getting a computer to somebody who is destitute, the time of the compu-geek who sets it up is worth more than a newer faster machine would be. The only difference between the old x86 machines and paper cups is quantity: there are fewer paper cups. Bill. (I'm not advocating a throw-away culture, BTW. Just noting the economics of the situation. I wish we could convince people to put in the effort to use and learn from the old machines rather than continuously filling up landfills with them just to make more. But I'm still a long way from getting the rest of the world to see things my way.) (Okay, so that's another difference between XTs and paper cups: paper cups are more landfill-friendly.) On 15 Apr 1999, Mike Ford <mikeford(a)netwiz.net> wrote: ] The Goodwill near me just got 600 computers from Pacific Bell, all 486 and ] older, most in pretty good shape. The result is that a LOT more only ] slightly wanky 486 boxes are getting tossed in the scrappers bin. Goodwill ] won't take a 386, or if it gets in the product stream it goes either to the ] scrapper or the huge AS-IS morning auction of bins of stuff only loosely ] sorted by category. ] ] However painfull you may find it personally, it only takes a TINY bit wrong ] to make an old computer have negative value except as scrap or parts.