Old is gold
Wahida Mitu
If you own an old computer and are thinking of scrapping it, do not worry. Someone from a new breed of young entrepreneurs in the city will come to your house and pay you a good price and pick up what you thought a piece of scrap. All you have to do is to make a telephone call. But you also have to be careful. Your old computer hard disk may contain recoverable information that you do not want others to share. According to a computer expert before selling your old computer you have to make sure that nobody is able to retrieve any classified information from it. Destroy your personal items from the hard disk by formatting, said the expert. The sector of recycling old computers is so booming in the city that a bazaar for old computer spare parts has pooped up at several places in the city. For instance, the bazaar near Bata Signal on Elephant road is popularly known as computer dholai khal, implicating it with the famous metal scrap yard of the city. Most of the computer dholai khal shop owners in Elephant road get the parts from the entrepreneurs who are scattered all over the city often operating from their own homes. They are using the old computers in various ways. Some convert the monitors into television sets after inserting TV card or channel box in it. "By using picture tube of old computer's monitor we make television and sell it for up to Tk 6,000 to low income people," said Mohammad Alamgir, who is involved in this business for six years. Some retrieve the spare parts and sell those after cleaning. Others use the old computers for a completely different purpose. Many clients virtually ask for cheap dummies of computers to be displayed in offices in the rural areas. According to sources these dodgy dummy buyers are mostly people who run small NGOs and have obtained a fund from a donor for buying new computers. They simply deceive the donors with the dummies. According to a computer expert there are some computers, which are unique in structure and their parts do not match any others in the market. Anyone having that particular brand must obtain spare parts from that particular scrap. The parts of the central processor unit (CPU) that the entrepreneurs sell from the old computer are motherboard, processor, Ram, AGP card, PCI card. From the computer monitor they reuse the monitor and the picture tube. Prices of the scrap computers are varied from Tk 2000 to Tk 15,000 depending on the condition, model and use of the computer, Mohammad Alamgir.
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