Securely disposing of old computers

[lustindarkness]

Reminds me, I have to go to the shooting range soon, I have an old broken laptop I can use as a target.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

My actual recommendation is to give a hard drive a pass with DBAN (Dave's Boot and Nuke) before handing it off to a computer recycler.  That makes data unrecoverable to an extent that physically destroying the drive is only really worth the extra effort if you've got stuff pertaining to national security on there (or it's required by company policy, but they'll usually contract with somebody to do the dirty work).

For national security and similar applications there exists a shredder for solid objects.  For hard drives the drive usually gets disassembled first, with the platters and controller boards going into the shredder while the inert parts go to a recycler.  Also the way to destroy floppies, USB sticks, and any other electronic devices that need to be destroyed to be sanitized.  I have never seen one, but supposedly they can ingest cellphones whole (presumably without the battery...).