What can I do with these old computers?

[Mr.Gump]

Thank you for taking the time to read this and hopefully helping me out. I am very happy to be here at the Computer Hope forums.

I have two basic questions. First, I  was gifted a 16gb Corsair Flash Voyager thumb drive. What kind of stuff can I do with it, besides putting photos and music on it?

My other question is this. I have fours old laptops sitting in a box and they do not work for whatever reasons. The notebook models are

1.) Dell XPS M1210
2.) Toshiba Satellite 2435-S255
3.) Sony Vaio PCG 9231
4.) Sony Vaio PCG 8C3L

They have been sitting on a shelf so I am pretty sure the HDD are fine. I would like to remove each notebooks HDD and access it. How can I do this? Is this a good option?   http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/a7ea/

Any recommendations are greatly appreciated. 

[Geek-9pm]

No, porr choice. IMP.
Instead:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=HDD
Or something like it that goes inside your Desktop.
If the drives are IDE and have at least 10GB you can install an alternative OS for the times when you want to try something else a little different.

[Mr.Gump]

I use a notebook.

[ceknight]

Don't know about your neck of the woods, but around here you can donate equipment to a recycle center called WinCycle. The will ensure all data is wiped out and then they refurbish, sell or donate to community organizations and such. They will give you a receipt for tax deduction. Not much, but keeps it out of the landfills and someone gets a use out of it.

[patio]

A 2.5" USB external enclosure would allow you to retrieve the data...

[neelchauhan]

Use the Working parts for other systems and recycle the systems with bad parts.