Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Computers & Technology Give away stuff

My wife has been cleaning up her office/computer place. She gave me a pile of CD's for which I have no use. These are very old (some almost 20 years old). Here is a list of them:
City Navigator north America 2009 (gps map)
Office 97
Epson perfection 1670 scanner software
Battle Chess (game)
Software toolworks illustrated encyclopedia version 2.0
software toolworks cd game pack
software toolworks atlas packtoolworks reference library
magazine rack (100,000 articles from more thaan 300 publications)
betty crocker recipes
the alt.support.diet-low-carb cookbook

If anybody wants them just tell me where to send them! For absolutely no reason I would rather give them to somebody than toss them.

I've recently given away almost everything I owned. Gonna give my car to the carpenter working on the house.

This is just old stuff. Can't imagine why anybody would want it. My problem is that i really don't like throwing stuff away but I gotta do it every now and then. I have boxes of old cd's that I should dump. And then there are the books. boxes and boxes of old scifi. I think half of them are wrecked by now. I have, for instance, a box of two book books that there used to be a lot of but they don't even sell them anymore. I should probably ask my kids if they might want them but I doubt it.

Office '97 huh? Sounds tempting...

I have been resurrecting 4-5 Dell Optiplexs mostly running Windows XP to use a stand alone machines for slide scanning, Guitar software for MIDI guitar, provided on 3.5 in floppies and while going through boxes etc, also found Window Office 2003, and a early win 3? 95-98 floppy boot disk, Adobe everything and photoshop.
As I dont think it wise to go on line with WindosXP, I am considering turning one of these machines into a Linux maybe Mint or something with training wheels.
I did have to untie a large medusa like bundle of monitor cables, not to mention Zip disks and two other machines with SCSI ports and cables, needed for the Nikon Coolscan 2x2 slide scanner with auto feed, that only has a SCSI port.
I also found my various College slide rules. Nothing said BMOC back then like the maroon leather K&E slide rule case that could hang on your belt! It booted up instantly!

TAT

Anybody who couldn't figure out where the decimal point belonged, was not fit to be STEM material. I even had a round slide rule. That was fun.

I had a round one too! It fit right in your shirt pocket, the one without the pocket protector!
This was crucial for dating, as some non-stem coeds were not impressed by the well hung belt slide rule cases

By that age I was packing a 28oz framing hammer.

Way too cool for school and a bit of an underachiever....

But my brother had one of those round ones...

I moved to linux (ubuntu) several years ago and have, pretty much, forgotten how to even deal with windows. If you do goto linux I would suggest you first examine the variety of Ubuntus out there. I think there is one similiar to windows which might make it easier for you. What I like about linux is that its free, it updates itself and that too is free and there is a LOT of help as well.

Oh, I also bought a used laptop on ebay, about 4 years ago and put ubuntu on that with no problem at all.

My main problem with ubuntu is when I google stuff on ubuntu and don't pay attention to how old it might be. The problem is that its likely you will come across directions that are older than the current system which makes for a mess so be sure to limit how old you want to go (you can do that easily with google (tools then "any time")

Google https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFlavors for ubuntu flavors. You can also run llinux on the same machine along with windows if you want.

I've used several different flavors of linux over the years. Some at home for fun and some for work. One hassle I found is that the updates come from here and there, and sometimes make your applications stop working. Then there is no Microsoft Support to ask for help. So it is pretty important to get a mainstream version that is well supported.

Yes, it's all open source, but sometimes that means you have to become a linux expert to keep your apps running. I could do that, but I was never getting paid to do that. Which is why my best linux experiences were with the work version supported by in-house IT linux experts.