Repurposing Consumer Hardware

ABSTRACT

These days you have to be more and more creative when tackling home technology projects because the inventory of raw material—second-hand technology—is changing so rapidly. Market and product cycles continue to shrink, standard form factors are being discarded to drive down costs, and pricing is becoming more dependent on market value and less on direct manufacturing cost. As a result, standard modular building blocks are disappearing. New alternative uses for obsolete or low-price products are emerging, however. I enjoy finding ways to extract new value from new or used hardware platforms, so I think it’s still a good time to be a technology hobbyist.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.8 PERSONAL COMPUTING
      K.8.2 Hardware