(Photo by Scott Robinson, Clearly Ambiguous)

The Toshiba laptop I bought in 1999 sat unused the last couple years. The last time I turned it on, I couldn’t coax the cursor out of its cozy nook in the top right corner of the screen.

Still, I felt a lil bad about just recycling the whole thing, cuz cursor aside, the laptop worked. I looked into a few programs that refurbished computers — but many were very far away, and required a $10 fee in addition to shipping — which I didn’t think would be worth it for a computer that might turn out to be worthless.

On a whim, I checked out Toshiba’s website and found the Toshiba Trade-In Center. The program, run by Dealtree, buys back your old computers, iPods, cell phones, and other electronics — which don’t even have to be Toshiba brand stuff — for refurbishing and resale. Best of all, they’ll send you some money for it!

So I clicked through and got an estimate, printed out the free pre-paid UPS form, and mailed the laptop to Dealtree.

Then I actually read the site. Apparently, the program’s a rebate type thing. I was supposed to mail my laptop in a receipt of a new Toshiba notebook purchase. Oopsie.

Luckily for me, Toshiba didn’t check up on this either. A couple weeks later, I got a check for a whopping $6.50 in the mail.

I only hope my old Toshiba’s been fixed and prettied up and in the hands of someone who’ll use it more than I did –

Update, 2/15/06: For more reliable old electronic resale, check out eBay’s EZtradein. (via Treehugger)

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