Old Computer Books

[ions]

What do you do with them? They've sat in your basement/closet/other place for months if not years without you touching them. Some are still even relevent, Java or C++ maybe, but they are no longer of use to you. What do you do with them? You know you'll never get much money for them,aggravating considering how much you did pay for them. You don't want to just add to overflowing landfills by throwing them out or recycling them. Some where someone would find them useful, I would think. But who and how do you find em? I've looked on eBay and that place is flooded with such books selling for 1/4 the cost it would be to ship em.

What do you do with em?!

Note, this is not an attempt to sell my old books here, I'm posting this with the assumption many of you have the same problem I do and are not looking for more old PC books.

[celticgeek]

I tend to take mine to a used book store. They have a cart where you can just put them, and then they are available free to anyone who wants them. Most of the ones I have taken there have not been there a day or two later, so I am assuming that someone took them, although it is possible that the book store people recycled them.

For books which are in really bad shape, I put them in a paper recycling bin.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I put them on a shelf, with the rest of my old books. Then, when people come over and see my "stash", they'll be amazed when I go, "yeah, you got that right-- I read all of them..." :cool:

[dkeav]

i donated my dated ones (old java books ect ect) to a local school systems library, they usually dont have access to technical books, and there may be some young geek in training that would appreciate it

[soulestream]

i donated my dated ones (old java books ect ect) to a local school systems library, they usually dont have access to technical books, and there may be some young geek in training that would appreciate it

Thats a good idea, we have a place in my hometown that offers training to the poor so they can find better jobs. They take old pc's and set up classrooms. They dont really care if its a office97(wow almost 10 yrs old) book. Any training is better than no training.

Some of my favorites I keep. MS-DOS 3.2

soule

[TheCatMan]

Just to muddy the water, some (not all) recycling places don't accept books because it's difficult to de-ink paper that was printed years ago. I used to work for a big recycling scheme where they mostly handled newspaper, and paper more than 3 months old was quietly diverted to landfill. Another reason to keep the old manuals, and also one of the reasons I prefer electronic books. :p