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Rehabilitating Damaged Laptops
Rollie Hawk writes "It breaks my heart to see a computer in need of a good home. For years, I've driven my wife crazy with all the 'strays' I've brought home with me. After all, the last thing my house needs is a few more cubic feet devoted to kenneling old and abused computers. That being said, laptops present very unique opportunities. No matter what caused you or someone else to ditch that old laptop, there still may be some way to integrate it back into society. For every kind of laptop lemon, I've found that there's plenty of lemonade to be made."
Once you have finished making lemonade, be certain not to spill it on your newly-refurbished laptop.
Woe to the players connecting to the resurrected old laptop for a game of UT2k4... Yikes!
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
Once we eliminate all sales men from using laptops they should be a lot safer.
plenty of lemonade to be made
Do what the Germans do, when life gives you lemons - burn them.
When my TI-99/4A died a few years back my little brother had fun with it for a bit... he destroyed it with a hammer.
Made me pretty mad but he had fun.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Have an old black and white television? Well, just use it to watch black and white movies, you won't notice the difference!
Damaged Display
Install Linux on it and make it into a server!
Tiny or Dead Hard Drive
Yep! Boot it from a CD and use it as a server!
Low Memory
A low memory server!
Dead Battery
plug it into a wall outlet and use it as a server!
Busted Keyboard or Touch Pad
Hook up a external keyboard and use it as a server!
Low Resolution Display
Servers dont need a display!
All of The Above?
Can you see where im going with this?
Conclusion
With a little imagination, just about any old piece of junk laptop can be a server!
what a crap article. his answer to all the problems is make it into a server - yeah thanks captain obvious. dosshell and edit for a word processor - kill me now!
Unfortunately, no one can be told what my sig is...
Completely dead. Everything broken:
Use it as a door stop.
Philip
Signatures are broken
Wouldn't it be healthier to develop the alcohol addiction instead? :)
And we can ALWAYS use more of us
Socially maladjusted elitsts? Oh yes I whole-heartedly agree.
Totally dead laptop
Strategically placed, it can serve as a doorstop
I've got it built into a custom plywood case with a 19" LCD, 4 drive RAID, tape backup and 100 disc CDR changer. I'm working on installing the 3 day battery backup and generator this week.
Now, could someone come help me? My legs are pinnned and crushed and I can't reach the remote.
laptop to server
no need to RTFA
must be slow news day (or 'article blows goats')
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
One of my pet projects now is to turn a laptop, a cuecat and a webcam into a fridge computer that will allow me to inventory my refridgerator as well as take a snapshot whenever I open the door. Imagine using a WAP-enabled phone to check what I have in the fridge at home. No more "do I have milk?".
:(
You know what else works great for that?... a girlfriend. Yeah, I know, I don't have one either.
the article fails to mention how useful old laptops are as doorstops, frisbees' and anchors.
You tried your best, & you failed miserably,
The lesson is:
Never Try
i'l try: /me bellows "wench! check for sour milk in the fridge ....
nope - doesn't work, i'l have to get myself a netbsd fridge with IEEE802.11b and usb2 (with webcam) so i can stream the contents of the fridge wirelessly to tvtime or something
hmmm.....
One of my pet projects now is to turn a laptop, a cuecat and a webcam into a fridge computer that will allow me to inventory my refridgerator as well as take a snapshot whenever I open the door.
Ah! Now at last we can answer that age old question that has been plaguing mankind! What happens to the light in the fridge when you close the door? You do mankind a great service...
.
.
.
.
.
(On a side note, for the humor impaired; Yes, I know what happens, but don't forget about the light in the equation for your idea...)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Life is beautiful.
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
He's probably patented those ideas.... be careful!
Fix it up with glue and paste.
Fancy a server?
Think of it as something to point friends-and-family to.
We'll be teaching Grandmothers to suck eggs.
None of them are particularly speedy, and half of them have cracked LCDs, but for what I'm using them for, they're fine
A table?
Yeah! DOWN WITH THE NEW IT COLOR SCHEME! It's unreadable on my cracked laptop display.
Be fair, Alioth, your parents didn't get really upset with you until you decided to find out how your little brother worked....
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
> I'm not really using them for any kind of processing. ...
>
> putting the old hardware to good use
You mean, wasting power idling for no purpose at all? Brilliant!
I myself have a "Beowulf cluster" of lightbulbs I keep running in my lower desk drawer; it was a real pain to set up enough ventilation to prevent my desk from catching on fire.
So the VAIO _only_ weighs 350 megagrams?
That's more than three hundred Volkswagens!
"I tell him I have it"
Oooohh - rookie mistake.
Proper response:"Laptop? Oh yeah; I played with it a lot but it never really got working properly, so I disposed of it."
Please note that, in the Clintonesque sense, you haven't told a lie: "Working properly" means 100%, and it's still missing keys; "Disposed of" literally means "to make a disposition," and its disposition is that it is good enough for you.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Oftentimes, this applies to holding on to the spouse as well...
My house is off-grid (solar power and generator backup.)
Citizen 523887 please report immediately to Consumer Re-education Camp Alpha2 for an "adjustment" to your resource consumption motivation.
Speak truth to power.