New Uses For Old Handheld Devices

Has your old handheld device outlived its usefulness? It might not be as worthless as you think.

Several companies have found a way to make money with these old devices. They're purchasing discontinued Palm and Hewlett-Packard PDAs, which can then be cannibalized for parts and resold for use in repairing broken machines. Robby Stanley, president and founder of Gethightech Inc. in Morgan Hill, Calif., has been buying and selling used Palm and Handspring devices for two years. Two months ago, he quit his IT job with headhunter firm Hall-Kinion to focus on his online business, which now has five employees.

"We average about 40 to 50 orders a day, seven days per week," Stanley says. "I wouldn't say it's lucrative, but it allows me to work full time doing it."

Stanley began his business by buying used devices through eBay, and later began buying old units from developers who needed newer versions for their applications.

Thaddeus Computing Inc. in Fairfield, Iowa, buys and sells parts for HP 200LX devices, which HP stopped producing in 1999. Wayne Kneeskern, manager of new and used equipment for Thaddeus, says the company has handled more than 10,000 of the units, which run on Microsoft DOS.