Keeping up with the newest technology is difficult for the most tech-savvy individuals and it’s proving to be a struggle for Northern New Mexico College.
The college has 562 pieces of what Director of Information Technologies Brian Salter called, “antiquated pieces of equipment.” All 562 pieces of equipment are at least five years old, outdated and not functioning, Salter said.
During the Oct. 25 Northern New Mexico College Board of Regents meeting, regent Alfred Herrera asked how the equipment would be disposed and if it could possibly be reused or donated to an organization in need.
Salter said the amount of unused, antiquated was so great, it would take too much time and money to properly erase all of the hard drives.
Salter took the helm of Northern’s IT department in July. When he came on the job, there were more than 550 pieces of computer equipment not being used and in storage, he said.
After tagging and matching the computer equipment against capital assets and then taking the equipment off the inventory list, the hard drives must be addressed, Salter said.
The hard drives must be pulled from all the desktops and laptops, then stripped of all the data.
“We either have to format the hard drive seven times or drill a hole through the middle of them,” Salter said.
Drilling holes through hard drives is the less expensive option of the two.
“And it would be a much more effective use of our time,” Salter said.
Vice President for Advancement Ricky Serna said Albuquerque Recycling will come to Northern’s Española campus and pick up the 562 pieces of antiquated equipment. The disposal will be of no charge to the college, Serna said.
Northern Facilities Supervisor Andy Romero said once the Albuquerque Recycling picks up the equipment, they will place it in a large grinder.
After it is processed once, the salvageable material will be pulled out of the vat and recycled, he said. The rest of the material will be crushed, then processed in the grinder a second time, Romero said.
The equipment slated for disposal is the following:
• 204 computer desktops
• 178 monitors
• 74 printers
• 29 laptops
• 13 servers
• three scanners
• once projector
• one switch (a device which provides separate connections for each network connection point in the internal network) and
• 61 other miscellaneous items of equipment.
Most of this equipment has been in storage in various departments of the college, Salter said. Out of these pieces of equipment, 478 pieces are from the Española campus, while the other 84 were in storage at the El Rito campus.
“I’m assuming a lot of this is years of neglect,” Northern President Rusty Barceló said.
After the initial disposal of the large surplus of unused equipment, Northern will try to keep the outdated equipment from “piling up” to a point where donating it to needy schools or groups is out of the question, Barceló said.