Hardware Tips: Is There Gold in Your Attic? Cash In Your Old PC

Old computers are more valuable than they used to be. Not too long ago, buying a new PC meant foisting your old system on an unsuspecting relative or friend. But now, even an early Pentium system may be worth something to someone. If your PC is less than six years old and in reasonable working order, you may be able to squeeze a few more productive hours--or even a few dollars--out of it. Here are your old-tech options.

Trade it in: Before you buy a new PC, see if the vendor offers any trade-in discounts. HP frequently runs special short-term trade-in promotions. As I write this, trading in a "good condition" Dell Dimension 4600 under HP's Ditch Your Dinosaur desktop promotion merits a $187 discount on a new HP5000. Click here to get a quote for your PC.

Give it away: Donating your PC to a charity can improve both your karma and your finances. Dell and HP will help you donate old computers to the nonprofit National Cristina Foundation, which gives them to the disadvantaged.

You can take the fair market value--but not the replacement value--of a donated system as a tax deduction. See IRS Publication 526 for more details on what you can and can't deduct. A bonus: Donate a PC through Dell, and you'll get a coupon for a 10 percent discount on purchases from the Dell Home Systems Software and Peripherals Web site.

What kinds of PCs can be donated? According to Dell, the company will accept any working Pentium-class notebook or desktop with a hard drive, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Include serial numbers, registration keys, and any other available documentation for all software installed on the system. Nonfunctioning machines may be accepted on a case-by-case basis. Check with other vendors and charities for their minimum PC-donation requirements. For more information, visit the TechSoup site and click Donate Hardware under 'Hardware Recycling' in the left pane.

Donate as many software and hardware extras with the PC as possible. If you're an educator, check out Microsoft's Fresh Start for Donated Computers program, which helps schools rejuvenate machines with damaged or missing operating systems.

Before you donate, wipe any personal info from the hard drive. Since powerful data-recovery programs are readily available, simply deleting files or reformatting the hard drive won't do; you need to overwrite your files with a disk-wiping utility such as Jetico's free BCWipe program.