Bring your old kit back to life

Posted on 25 Sep 2008 at 10:45

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You may think that it's destined for the scrapheap, but there's life in the old PC yet. Matthew Sparkes explains how you can increase the longevity of your equipment.

We have got used to changing our computer hardware every few years. Unlike any other expensive purchases, we are resigned to replacing computers and peripherals periodically, discarding our old machines because they have little or no resale value. There are lots of reasons why hardware is no longer up to the task, but upgrading is usually a matter of convenience rather than because devices have come to the end of their working life. In this respect, computers and peripherals are like ballpoint pens - it's rare to use one until it's worn out.

Storage formats come and go, forcing us to upgrade backup drives, while improved technology arrives to make previously usable items such as CRT monitors seem archaic. Computers get left behind by new software and its increasingly heavy demands on processing power. In a way, software developers determine a PC's lifespan, by dictating how powerful a machine needs to be to run the latest version of must-have applications.

Not only is this bad for your wallet, it's also bad for the environment. Computers are complex machines that require a huge amount of energy to make, and also contain harmful materials including mercury, cadmium, dioxins and PCBs. When you consider that 251 million PCs were sold last year alone, this has the makings of a serious environmental problem. With a little time and imagination, there are many ways that ageing hardware can be put to use in the home or office, keeping your bank balance up while doing your bit to reduce the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Over the digital wall

What makes a PC or peripheral obsolete rather than just old? It's often the case that modern PCs are not compatible with older peripherals. A SCSI scanner may still work perfectly well, but try to find a modern computer to connect it to and you'll be disappointed. The general move away from SCSI to a flexible and easy-to-use standard such as USB is good news for most people, but it could leave you with a high-quality device that is close to useless. Sometimes this problem can be overcome by fitting an adaptor into a new PC, but occasionally hardware becomes irrelevant or uneconomical due to the available commercial services or even a country's technical infrastructure. Dial-up modems and analogue mobile phones are good examples of technology that you'll rarely find a use for today.

Even if older hardware can be plugged into a new computer, it may not run properly, or at all, because of a lack of software drivers. These are the chunks of code that act as a gateway between the operating system and the hardware, allowing them to communicate. Developers working on a new operating system have to find a happy medium between including all possible device drivers, which would fill your hard disk with unnecessary files, and keeping the code trimmed down but able to support as much popular hardware as possible.

Hardware manufacturers also contribute to the death of their products. At some point, they have to decide to stop creating new drivers for old hardware. When a new version of Windows is released, they have to assess if it's worth the time and effort to provide drivers when the number of customers that need them is diminishing.

This can leave you with hardware that is perfectly serviceable, but infuriatingly incompatible with the new version of your chosen operating system. Often the only way around this is to not upgrade in the first place - but this comes with its own problems. Microsoft eventually stops supporting previous versions of Windows, as hardware manufacturers do with their old products, which means you won't have patches for the latest security vulnerabilities.