Recycling old Macs

Fired up some of my old PPC PowerBook Macs languishing in the closet. Two out of three chimed right up. One went murf? (A bad battery). Love that startup chord. Reminds me of a nerdy Star Trek convention. Gawd. I can't believe I lugged them around for grad school. They were old in 2000. Off to e-waste they go. Sad, really. The PowerBook 5300 was designed between 1993 and 1994 under the codename M2. Release date August 25, 1995! The newest one of the lot, MacBook's ancestor, the PowerBook 1400 was from 1996!  Works fine, but is a little slow. OS 9! Wow! Will the battery recharge? They're far too old to recycle. No one wants them. Hence, e-waste (the guy I met on Craigslist—from the Uhuru Alternative school stood me up). I must say that the new-to-me MacBookPro is one sweet Mac! I now have a headless 2007 MacBookPro (screen backlight inverter is out—I’m too lazy to replace it tho I do have the part—he sold me a spare MacBook for parts). I’m using it as as my main desktop, sans screen, with an Apple LCD monitor. The MacBook Pro, though only a year older than my iMac and MacBook is amazingly fast, considering its age. Last owner was a musician, who blew out the speakers and he must've skateboarded with it as it's pretty bent up. But I've workarounds for daid optical drive, etc. Only thing not working is the mike in. But the price was beyond good! My old 2006 MacBook is way slower—but I extended its life with a solid state drive and more memory nicked from the iMac—about the only thing I could salvage. The MacBook is very zippy now. But it runs hot. At least it's a MacBook—meaning it’s portable and I can take it with me on the road—even though the optical drive is unreliable. I tend to keep my Macs running decades past their expiration date. Neil gets all my fixer-upper Macs. Right now he’s using a sweet iLamp, a discard from my “Mac wife,” Piet Bess who is even more resourceful than I am when it comes to fixing obsolete Macs. I replaced the optical drive—nightmare to get everything back into that half Wilson ball. When I replace my 2006 MacBook with a newer one, Neil, and eventually Piet will inherit it. Keep it in the family. It killed me to put my old big screen PPC iMac in the e-waste pile—it had a blown power supply (a series of brownouts were not kind to it), as it had the best matte screen ever. Photos looked fantastic on it. There was no salvaging it this time. Blown capacitors—way above my pay grade. I will surely miss it, but I won’t miss all the old PowerBooks. The guy eventually came and took three boxes of Mac goodies and software away. All the old PowerMacs and PowerBooks will be pressed into use at the Uhuru alternative school for Black kids. Passing the favor on, Star Trek style. Beam me aboard, Scotty!