How to get rid of a computer

It's not often that I feel the need to smash something up with a hammer, but the old computer had been sitting unused for about two years, and it was time for it to go.

Heeding all the scare stories about identity theft from unwiped hard drives, my son carefully removed the two hard drives. We loaded the PC into the car to go to the "Household Reuse and Recycling Centre (The Tip)", where a man in a little hut recycles salvageable electronic components into his own pocket, and then set about destroying the hard drives.

We banged them repeatedly with a hammer, we stood on them, we jumped on them. We tried a bigger hammer. They were indestructible. So now they're back on the shelf until we can take advantage of some anger management issues and get the hammer out again.

Click here to see a video clip of a more thorough hammering of a hard drive.