patrick.net

Perhaps people taking roadtrips between CA and FL, especially if they are driving vans.

Another idea is to crowd source the transportation, if you trust people. See http://www.hitchbot.me/ as an example.

You could have someone traveling by car to some location closer to your destination carry a few dozen laptops. Then that guy finds someone else who's travel from his location to some other location closer to your destination and passes the laptops to him.

This could be done in parallel and asynchronously. You wouldn't know when the laptops will arrive, but it would make a hell of an experiment and a hell of a story.

What about donating to local public libraries, schools, or community colleges instead of shipping across the continent?

Dan8267 says

Another idea is to crowd source the transportation, if you trust people. See http://www.hitchbot.me/ as an example.

You could have someone traveling by car to some location closer to your destination carry a few dozen laptops. Then that guy finds someone else who's travel from his location to some other location closer to your destination and passes the laptops to him.

This could be done in parallel and asynchronously. You wouldn't know when the laptops will arrive, but it would make a hell of an experiment and a hell of a story.

That's not a bad idea. In my world, they are fully depreciated and so the only loss would be to the intended needy recipients. I could look into that...Craigslist mules maybe too! :)

curious2 says

What about donating to local public libraries, schools, or community colleges instead of shipping across the continent?

I've been down that road for decades and it always ends up crappy. Every company I ever helped thinks some school wants their old equipment, but it's usually an OS behind and they're not teaching the kids that stuff.

I've spent days trying to find home for Enterprise printers to no avail--"too big!", "wrong nema specs!", etc. I'm not even positive about these lappies, but my folks have located a few charities that say they are eager so I can offload that responsibility to them and increase the odds.

I've been in the shelters there and I think I can make it work.

On top of that, I may just send 50 to Florida, and funnel the other 150 to local folks.

I applaud the effort, anything to keep all those computers out of the landfill and be of some good use to boot.

http://www.globalstewards.org/computers.htm

"FREE Business pickups for 10+ computers or monitors, or 1+ working laptops."

http://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/about-rci-program

justme says

I applaud the effort, anything to keep all those computers out of the landfill and be of some good use to boot.

Thanks!

curious2 says

http://www.globalstewards.org/computers.htm

"FREE Business pickups for 10+ computers or monitors, or 1+ working laptops."

http://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/about-rci-program

Thanks! Those are the ones I currently deal with.