Laptops: out with the old; in with the new

When I started Uni, my parents bought me a laptop as a gift for graduating from high school. It was fabulous, it has served me well, but it was six years old this February. That's pretty much geriatric in laptop years. It was showing its age. It took about ten minutes to start up, couldn't go more than five minutes without being plugged in to the power supply, and using multiple programs at once was often a bit too much for it to handle. A couple of months ago I accepted it was retirement time for my faithful assistant and bought myself a new 13 inch Apple Macbook. It's beautiful and it works like a dream. It also stacks up pretty well in the environmentally friendly stakes. The LED backlit display is very energy efficient, a lot of the components are recyclable, and they have eliminated many of the toxins that are commonly used in manufacturing laptops.

Ever since I got my new Macbook, my old laptop has sat neglected in a corner of my room. I didn't think it was worth trying to sell on Trademe, because new computers are so cheap these days, but I thought it would be nice if someone else could get some benefit out of it. So I decided to list it with DonateNZ. The DonateNZ concept is fabulous. Donors can list items that they think someone else out there might want, and recipients (who have to meet certain criteria) can browse the donations on offer or post their wishes. It was very quick and easy to list my laptop, and it was snapped up by a school the same evening. They were very grateful, and I even received a "warm fuzzy" from them in my email the next day. The good feeling I got from donating my old laptop far outweighed the benefit of the measly amount of cash I might have made if I'd managed to sell it. There are plenty more wishes waiting to be fulfilled - can you help?