The more things change…

I was reminded by the recent blog post of Farhad Manjoo, on his blog PandoDaily, in his talk about the iPad3 and the Amazon trade-in program – that with all our posts on embracing change, we had not talked about the one change that I as a Tech person, experience the most frequently… Technology changes.

There are really three stages of embracing technology changes (whether it is a piece of hardware, or software application or new operating system), and they are:

1.  Trying to figure out if it is worth it to make the change.

For many “early adopters” this step is perhaps just a moment of hesitation before pulling out the credit card or writing the check for that new shiny piece of technology.

But for the rest of us (and yes, I hesitate to get the newest stuff because I am a “once burned, twice burned, thrice shy”kind of gal) – we have to figure out if the price tag and the value are worth the hassle of trying to learn and make use of this new bit of fun.  Often, the newest piece of hardware and/or software has been released and it is “not quite ready for prime time” – and while it may not have BETA written anywhere, it is truly a Beta release.

This means that it is being tested by end users in real life usage and may be unpredictable at best, and buggy at worst case.  It translates to frustration and a lot of hours spent downloading patches and updates, and rebooting.  I tend to wait a few months for all the worst of the surprises to be uncovered by more adventurous sorts of folks.  I like my shiny new things to work properly out of the box, or as nearly as possible.

2.  Getting it, and the ensuing fun of installing, implementing, learning, swearing, and using the new item.

3.  Figuring out what to do with the old item.

In the case of iPads, there were a number of places to sell your used iPad2 that had high dollars right up to the point that the iPad3 became available, and now the prices for resell or trade-in are lower by a bit.  Still, if you (or your business) are on a tight budget – the question of what to do with old equipment is a tough one.

There are a number of resources for donating and/or recycling your old equipment (not so much for software, sadly).  And you can always sell your old equipment – see eBay.com or Craigslist.org.

But before you trade in or sell or donate your equipment, be sure to really remove all your data and information from any of the storage media that might be present.  There are a number of software tools available for helping you to remove all the personal data from your pc, or if you are not comfortable doing it yourself, your IT folks should know how to do this.  However you do it, just do it.  There are a number of scandals that have happened because large government agencies failed this simple step, and citizen’s personal data became compromised as a result.  And as entrepreneurs, artists and writers – we don’t need to have our personal information or any of our client information out in public opening us up for embarrassment or legal actions.

P.S.  If you want to understand more about cleaning your pc before disposing of it – check out this article at OnGuardOnline.gov