A: You have a number of options. Many AT&T; Mobility, Sprint and Verizon Wireless stores accept used phones, which they recycle or refurbish and donate to nonprofits. They also accept batteries and chargers.

You also can get rid of the phones through the U.S. Postal Service's Mail Back program, which lets people mail old phones in for recycling, postage-free. They'll even give you envelopes for the phones. About 1,500 post offices around the country participate in the pilot program.

Depending on the model of your phone, you may be able to sell it - the Web is replete with companies offering cash for old phones. And lastly, you can donate the phones directly to a nonprofit - either a local charity or an online group such as CellPhonesforSoldiers.com.

Before you dump an old phone, make sure to terminate your service plan, erase personal information on the phone and remove the SIM card if the phone has one.

Q: I keep getting suggestions to add specific people to my list of Facebook friends. Some of the suggestions can have only one source: my record of e-mail correspondence going back several years. A lot of the suggested people are not friends, but casual or business correspondents. How does Facebook gain access to my e-mail history, and should I be bothered by this? (I am.)

A: Facebook has a feature called Friend Finder that searches your e-mail contact list (if you let it) for people who are Facebook members. You can then invite anyone on the list to be a Facebook friend.

When you signed up for Facebook, you probably used Friend Finder - and it is now reminding you that there are Facebook members among your e-mail contacts with whom you still are not friends. The problem is that Facebook has no way of knowing whether folks in your contact list are really friends or just business acquaintances.

Hey, it could be worse. In Facebook's Help forum, one guy posted the following entreaty: "Had 8,000 friend requests earlier because my e-mail is in a group to get friends for Mafia Wars [a popular online video game]. ... I can only ignore requests at about 100 at a time because it messes up. Can I do ANYTHING about it?" To which I say, good luck on that one.

Q: Our son is going away to college in the fall, and we're looking for a notebook computer he can take with him. Should we consider an "industrial strength" model that could survive being dropped and spilled on, or is a regular consumer notebook strong enough?

A: Rugged notebooks are made to be used by technicians at construction sites, soldiers in Afghanistan, and accident-prone business people. They're tough, all right, but you get a lot more computer for the money (a more powerful chip, larger display, and bigger hard drive) if you stick with a standard notebook. Rugged computers also can be heavier - a big disadvantage for a student who has to lug one around campus.

For the record, the top contenders in the market for rugged notebooks are Panasonic (panasonic.com), with its line of Toughbooks, and Gammatech with its Durabooks (durabook.com). These computers feature magnesium alloy cases and spill-resistant keyboards. Pricewise, Durabooks are a better deal. A Durabook certified to meet the U.S. military's 810F standard for withstanding drops and vibrations can be had for under $1,000.

Bottom line: A regular notebook, or even a lightweight netbook, is probably the way to go. Just tell Junior if he drops it, don't come home.

Q: On my Windows XP computer, the taskbar with the Start button has jumped from the bottom of the screen to the left side, usurping space used by my programs. How can I get it back at the bottom where it belongs?

A: That taskbar's a slippery devil. If you click your mouse pointer in an empty spot on it, you can drag it to either side of the screen or to the top - something you appear to have done inadvertently. So simply drag it back to the bottom.

Then right-click an empty spot on the taskbar and choose Lock Taskbar, which will prevent unauthorized movements in the future.

Got a question about computing? E-mail David Einstein at einstein.dave@gmail.com.

This article appeared on page DC - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle