There are several options for using old computers, including using them in your office or donating them to a local or national charity group. Older, slower computers can be used for scheduled backups of networks, Internet, and e-mail gateway computers. Employees who do not have a need for a lot of computer power, such as word-processing, can use older models.

You can provide old computers to staff, local non-profit groups, and school systems.  However, make sure there are no operating system and application software license restrictions on the computers that you donate.

Remember that computer data on the hard drive may contain some lawyer client/confidentiality information. Confidentiality is a major consideration when you are disposing of older computers; especially where someone may use undelete and reconstruct software to resurrect files. For example, some programs permit you to automatically recover and restore data after accidental or intentional data loss from events like a reformatted hard drive. If you are going to delete the data; erase the entire drive, delete all hard drive partitions, repartition the hard drive, reformat the drive, and overwrite the reformatted drive with a program that writes zeros several times over the top of all unused hard drive space.

The safest way to ensure confidentiality is to remove the hard drive and destroy it.