GE Computing has been taking Mac computers from 2006 through 2012 or so and turning them into what they call “faux Macs”. They utilize the hardware and design and make it into a computer that is current and very useable. “You can’t use it like a Mac, because, after all, it can’t be Apple Updated.  But it is a computer. You can use it for browsing the web, for writing—actually for anything you would have used it before for,” explains Gibbens. “It can even play games, and has a library of thousands of applications. It will act and feel more like a traditional non-Apple computer.”

   

PCs can be updated, too. “We have been taking Windows computers from 2007 to the present and rebuilding them. Most, back to 2009, can have Windows 10 installed in them; they will just be a little slower than the ‘latest and greatest’,” says Gibbens. In addition, some netbooks can also be updated to remain useful.

   

In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gibbens has been reworking computers for students whose families do not own computers, and for those suddenly working from home. He will even take donations, clean them up and donate them to needy families. “If you have a computer that experts consider ‘obsolete’, it may be able to be fixed to give someone who can’t afford one, a new computer to use,” says Gibbens.