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What To Do With Old Laptops?
An anonymous reader writes "I've recently acquired a few old P2/P3 laptops. Most either work properly but are slow, or have various problems with power supplies and/or batteries. Attempting to sell them would probably earn less than the cost of shipping, so that's out of the question. I was hoping the Slashdot crowd could give me some ideas on what to do with these old computers. As somebody who already has ~10 computers lying around the house there is certainly no need for an additional computer to 'experiment' with, so I was hoping for some more creative suggestions."
Find poor people and give it away.
Donate to a charity - there are many developing 3rd world countries that I am sure would love to get their hands on something like that.
Send them to me. I'll find a use for them. Hell, I'll pay your shipping.
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Since OLPC seems to be voiding its own warranty, after a manner of speaking, why not stick an older Linux distro on them, like RH 7 or so, and give 'em away to some local kids who are into sci/tech but maybe don't have a lot of money?
I'm sure that relevant teachers at the local high school or something might be able to hook you up with the right kind of kids, and you maybe could get a tax deduction out of it, even if they required a tad bit of work on the power supplies or batteries I'm sure you'd still come out ahead, even if only morally.
I realize that you have already have a number of computers to play around with, but why not use these? Even if they are old and slow, they will still run Linux (or Windows 2000/XP/2003 if you prefer, just not as well). It will also save you a little on your monthly power bill.
Or you could ship a good one to me. I'll give it a very good home.
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Front end for a myth box... most laptops have one or more video outputs, are quiet, small, and energy efficient!
If you don't think that selling them outright would be worth your money, than tear them down to their most significant brand/model specific parts, and sell those through your favorite auction site. I've seen parts for my 5 year-old P4 laptop going for non-trivial prices.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Some people seem to think that any computer older than 6 mos. is worthless. I think most people who run out and buy a brand new machine every year just to have the "latest and greatest" is a sucker. My oldest comp. is a 4 yr. old Thinkpad T30. It runs at 1.8 GHz and it works great. Yes, batteries go bad over time, but a replacement was only about $40. I don't download every MP3 on the net and I rarely play games on it. It does what I want and it does it well. I have 2 desktops, a home-made 1.7 GHz AMD and a 1.8 GHz Dell. They're about 4 years old as well and they still work great. Some will no doubt call my computers "slow" but let's get real. I'm not doing video editing. I'm not a "gamer". Therefore, they're plenty fast for what I do. Hell I've got a 486-DX (running DOS) that does some things pretty damn fast! Oh and by the way, there are certain things that ONLY 486-DX's can do. I won't get into the details here but sold in the proper venues (ham radio swap meets), they can fetch $50+.
You could meet the needs of a small library by throwing a wireless card into each of them, then pick up one new desktop machine and set the laptops up as thin clients.
Find some small computer shop and get them to donate the desktop machine in exchange for a plaque on the wall at the library (cheap advertising and tax deductible donation for them), set it up over a weekend, and claim the cost of the laptops and your time as a charitable donation when you do your own taxes.
Or, of course, you could make a bunch of ugly digital picture frames that consume way too much electricity.
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They'll make great terminals. All you need is a simple boot image to get each one to attach to the network and connect to an Linux Terminal Server.
At that point you've got a nice farm of small terminals with a big powerful server behind them. If you don't need this for yourself, consider donating the whole setup to a local school, church, or other organization that could use a low-maintenance multiuser computing environment.
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If you have a less-fortunate family member or friend, it's also a good use. My sister, for example, is using a Tecra 8100 with a (I think) 500MHz P3. It does everything she might need it to do: internet browsing, email, and word processing. I recently fixed it up for her (broken hinge, OS reinstall, recelled the battery) so now it's better than new! And no cost to her, either.
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That's not so easy. Video inputs are required(and not standard on machines that slow) and some LCD's don't work that easily due to the length of ribbon cables, etc., and you won't discover it until after you've disassembled them.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
About a month later I ask how the project is going and they just say either 1) They bought a monitor, or 2) Admit it's a tough problem!
Mostly random stuff.
If they function AT ALL without further expense I can think of several deserving charities here in Costa Rica that would certainly appreciate getting 5 laptops. Contact me if interested
Stoptional
no gun: trebuchet.
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I've used laptops as a second monitor using MaxiVista (www.maxivista.com) Its not too good for high motion screens, but great for have the web on one screen and Word on another...
I'm glad someone thought that the picture frame idea was somewhat lacking.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) we've gotten to the point where technology, even free, is completely obsolete in 10-15 years. In a few years the cost of maintaining those systems as well as the extra electricity will probably make them more costly than a replacement. Still, if it's a few more good years, that's not bad.
What should be focused on more is safe disposal of computer equipment. We are very fast approaching the point of PC saturation. Almost everyone has a PC that wants one (in industrialized nations) and new models are very cheap. Very few people want the hassle of a PC after it's been handed down twice. (assume 5-7 years old.) Past that it's almost useless; the price, performance, size and features almost always win out for "buy new". You're going to likely be looking at 40+ million old PC/laptops disposed each year in the US alone, excluding businesses. (5 year lifespan, 2 in 3 people with a computer.)
I am not an expert. If I am misled in something, please correct me.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
How about turning them into a Folding @ Home farm?
give to needy schools
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Where is the wireless keyboard going to sit? On the counter. Since a keyboard is going to be taking up space on the counter either way, there's little point to mounting the laptop upside down under a cabinet.
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At least then he can shut it down gracefully, maybe with a script that does so a few minutes after the DC power disappears. In this case it probably won't be used for something mission critical, so it wouldn't be practical to keep the server going through a whole power failure anyway.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
You're kidding, right?
My girlfriend, both of my parents, and the majority of my extended family are all teachers, so I think I have it on good authority that the correlation ratio between well-funded schools and highly achieving students is approaching one. There are some definite confounding variables in there, such as good administrators (which are easier to get with a higher budget, by the way) and parental involvement (incidentally, the most involved parents also tend to be the most educated and wealthiest, and make sure that their children are in better funded schools through both donations and municipal property taxes), but that doesn't mean funding has any less of an effect.
For example, my girlfriend is finishing her student teaching this semester and is looking for a job teaching art in the fall. She's taught at 2 different schools, one was in a small semi-rural town with fairly high family incomes and property taxes that is surrounded by colleges (including 2 of the Seven Sister schools), the other in a medium-sized city (4th largest in the state, but we don't have many large cities) with very low family incomes and junk-bond status. The former was "underfunded" and they could only run two ceramics classes each term for a student population of about 500 7th-12th graders, the latter wouldn't reimburse my girlfriend $2 for Styrofoam trays we bought from a grocery store so she could do an improvised printmaking unit because the students were getting sick of drawing on newsprint every day and those were the only supplies readily available in a school of a bit under 2000 7th and 8th graders. Guess which school has higher achieving students? Guess which spends more per student?
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