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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."
A gallon of gasoline and a match.
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Seems fairly common, but should be easy enough.
Turn them into picture frames. http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_picture_frame.html
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
at craigslist.org? Offer the whole lot for a small charge (or not so small charge - I would think you could get at least $50 for a P3 laptop, if not more).
...I'd taken an old P2 200, flipped the screen around, threw a wireless card in it, and made a digital picture frame for my grandmother for Mother's Day two years ago. Been meaning to revisit that project. Another option is just as a heads-up display. I've got an old Compaq Presario hanging off my wall which does nothing but shell outputs of the status of my network, as well as a buffer for the latest SNMP traps. It blinks in big red text if anything goes particularly sideways (fatal trap). Took a fair bit of scripting, but it was fun.
Informatus Technologicus
Find poor people and give it away.
Fix em up if you can and give em to a kids. I'm sure you could get at least a couple goin out of the pile, no?
I've put win2k on them and they seem to be fine for this purpose.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Create a virtual virus zoo.
the real question you're asking is Will it blend?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
My karmas gonna take a hit but... How about a beowulf cluster?
...To try to get Vista running on one of them.
Then again setting yourself on fire would probably be a much more pleasant experience.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
http://www.puppylinux.org/
Runs great on older systems. Just the thing to breathe new life into those old lappies.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I'll deal with it office space style :-)
I use old laptops for things like serving up web pages, running an FTP site, portable web-cam host, print server, file server, repeater, router or whatever other services where a power efficient, portable computer can be used. If you have it set up to run a single service or two, then performance is not going to be that big of an issue.
For a web server, for example. I install a low-overhead Linux distro with Apache, ssh and maybe vnc and copy my www directory to it. BAM! Web server! It uses less power than any of my PC's, and it allows me to reboot my "real" machine without taking the web page down.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Send them to me. I'll find a use for them. Hell, I'll pay your shipping.
My blog
here, do this: http://www.computerswithcauses.org/
If not Dell, but they are a major manufacturer then try contacing them to see if they also recycle.
I know this is not a creative use, but whats the point of having old hardware lying around if it they have "various problems with power supplies and/or batteries"
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
There are many folks that would really benefit from a computer with an productivity suite and Internet capabilities. Install linux and open office then give away on freecycle.org. Caveat that there is no support available.
http://www.freecycle.org/
No, you can't re-use the screens as monitors for your desktop PC. At least not in an effective way, ie it will cost you far less in time and aggravation to simply buy a new LCD monitor. They are quite reasonably priced.
Mostly random stuff.
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.
My Sysadmin Blog
I use a Kurobox (266MHz PowerPC w/ 128MB RAM) running TorrentFlux as a Bittorrent server; it functions remarkably well. I'm sure those laptops are at least as powerful as that.
Power consumption isn't so high as in a Desktop PC, and you can put some firmware inside it with much more functionality that you would get from those cheap routers around.
Set one up as an LTSP server, and run the others as thin clients. Not for any reason, just because you can.
They CAN be useful. My P2/350mhz/256 ram/ runs Debian, everything works, and goes with my while on the road. I have a wireless card, and it browses the internet, plays audio, and Galaga well. What more could you ask for? Who in the world would swipe it out of your hotel room? I leave it at the command prompt login, run no login window manager, the cleaning lady will be baffled beyond belief if she opened it to look. It is a great traveling companion. If it goes missing, no big investment either.
And it was fun to get working! How many people get the IBM Thinkpad 600e sound working? That was a real challenge, but it is working!
I would check ebay prices (final selling prices, not mid-auction bids) because I'm surprised you don't think they'd be worth the price of shipping. My experience is that used working laptops have surprisingly high prices because many people know they just need something simple for doing schoolwork etc. I mean, look at this (then again maybe those guys are just crazy - $930!!??). Linux should run great on those laptops. P3's in particular really are not bad computers and might even have a DVD reader.
Dig a big hole in your yard, throw them in and cover it over again.
It works for big business, so it should work for you too.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Most laptops fit easily in racks, and can be used either as consoles or VNC terminals. They can basically function as the poor man's rack KVM and display & I/O tray. Another thing more relevant to the first use is that OLD laptops still mostly have real serial ports and all, whereas those are getting harder and harder to find on new laptops.
Autoconfig, extended range wireless adaptors, bittorrent 24x7 from every network you can get connected to; you know, for the children.
on a more serious note, I used to work at a place where we were required to take "retired" laptops to the dumpster, somehow they ended up in the trunk of my car more often than not...
NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) runs a laptop loaner program, where people without regular access to a computer can borrow one for a month for free in order to write a novel. It isn't exactly charity, but self-motivated intellectual persuits need all the support they can muster in our society. Most of the laptop loaners work fine but the batteries are shot (aka most used laptops).
I have "fixed up" (clean install with no bricking garbage on it) several and given them to family members at various times.
I have installed one with win2k+remote desktop client and NOTHING else so I could VPN + Remote in to our wintel machines at work without having to worry about work's big brother software locking me out because I have skype installed...
Finally, you could work on some decorative case mods, such as a Steampunk Laptop
Just sell them on Ebay as spare parts. The buyer can cover your shipping costs, so that's a non-issue. Depending on the model, the LCD itself is probably worth at least $50 so you will probably get plenty of bids.
Front end for a myth box... most laptops have one or more video outputs, are quiet, small, and energy efficient!
PULL!
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
I have a mythtv server at the house with one guest in the master bedroom. The server stores all of the content, and the guests can stream video and decode on the fly. Older laptops make perfect guests because most of them already have svideo/composite out and they are extreamly small. I have a p3 800 SFF with 512 megs of memory and a crappy video card and it plays h264 over the wire flawlessly, FF/RR no problem either.
1. Take the hard drives out and stick them in a USB Shell. Voila, instant backup/portable storage solution!
;-))
2. Take the memory chips and sell them on ebay as upgrades.
3. Rip the screens out and use them to create a Head Mounted Display in your home Virtual Reality project. (Yay for 90's thinking!
4. Unsolder the parts and use them for home hardware projects.
5. I'm running out of ideas. Maybe use the shell to stuff something geeky inside? Like a Commodore 64 Laptop?
6. Last but not least, cobble the best and/or compatible parts together to create one or two functional laptops. Load an OS in development (e.g. JNode) and use it for portable Operating System development. Alternatively, use it for an educational experience by building Linux from Scratch.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Now's your chance to break out your favorite shotgun or rifle. Line them up and blast away. But make a video of the whole thing and post it on youtube so we can see it. Everyone likes watching things blow up.
This is my sig.
Find a friend who is going overseas, and send them to someone in Africa or Asia whose income is so low that they will be a real blessing. This works especially well with students overseas, as they are willing to learn something new like a computer. Laptops are light relatively and so make prime candidates for this. If you don't have contacts who do this kind of thing, a good place to start is your local church, especially ones that are mission oriented. Kudos for seeking to find a way to recycle those old computers.
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.
I'd treat them to a nice day at the rifle range.
I'd either give it to a school, my grandparents who are far away or to some other senoir citizen. Installed with Linux of course.
We have an excellent organization in the San Francisco Bay Area http://www.accrc.org/ run by a bunch of Linux geeks that takes anything you can plug in and finds the best use for it. I've always donated in person as I live just a few miles away, but their web site has info for out-of-state donations.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
My company gives me old computers like that every now and again and I try and rehab them and donate them to schools. Most school districts will jump at the chance to get free computers and it's a good way to keep them out of the dump and put them to good use. Some of them are very responsive to putting something like Edubuntu on them, but it's extremely dependent on the IT department you're dealing with.
I don't understand the point of "acquiring" them in the first place, let alone having 10 other computers lying around. Let old, useless junk lie.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Use them as coasters.
I hear the air force is looking for some computers for a Bot Net
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
www.freecycle.org Give them to those that want. If you are feeling nice install a nice clean XP image (if they have a sticker for it) or install Ubuntu and tweak it to run well on old hardware for them.
What do you want them for? Give them away no strings attached to your nearest youth center, or even public school. Let them know what the assorted problems are, and let them deal with it.
:D
If you have the time, you could even help in refurbishing these laptops with a decent baseline Slackware (or some such) install. If not, put them in touch with someone who has the necessary werewithal.
This is a win-win - you get rid of unused hardware cluttering up your living space, and the recipients gain access to potentially valuable learning tools. The Linux gospel spreads, people learn, and everybody is better off on the whole. There, now doesn't that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling??
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Abbeyfield is big in the UK and Canada. I'd say put Linux on them and contact a local board and see if you can get them into the hands of residents. I suggest Abbeyfield because generally their residents are clear-headed and independent. I'm sure many would be grateful for an Internet-able laptop, no matter how lowly.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
And you can install Linux on them too. Insert Beowulf cluster joke here--->
Thin clients. Install a wifi card and mount one to the wall or cabinets in your kitchen. No battery necessary. Install LTSP or similar on a server and bammo! Instant kitchen terminal.
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Install Ubuntu, and install them around the house, you as picture frames, weather reporters, etc. Perhaps have one in the kitchen to view recipes online? Media centers?
There are a TON of things to do.
Oh, wait. You said P2/P3s. Oh well, you could have had a real nice heater if they were P4s.
I'd say either try to recycle them (at a cost to you), donate them (at a small or no cost to you), use them to run some sort of distributed computing program (some sort of @home thing), for the ones that do run. Or just pull an office space and take out some aggression on them. Good luck.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
use a small distro like Damn Small Linux, which has open office, and find someone to donate it too. Ask your local high school technology teacher.
i would take old laptops, install Linux on it with a bittorrent client, load it with lots of mp3 & mpeg files that make the MPAA & RIAA really angry and find a good wifi hotspot and plug the AC adapter to a spare outlet and abandon it, (be sure to wipe any fingerprints off beforehand)...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Use them as control terminals (one for each room, maybe in the wall somewhere) and servers for your houses living controls: thermostat, phone, tv, music, lighting, and maybe some web-cams and other security features, to name the big ones I'd want.
There is a non profit organization named reBoot in Canada that takes old machines, cleans them and donates them to various community centers and other non-profit organizations that are in need of computers. This is their website, they have a few locations across the country. It's a nice place, I did my volunteer hours there. If you have old machines that you need to get rid of, perhaps try here before igniting them or going "Office Space" on them. :P
Last I checked they like it if you have a many systems of the same model, it makes it easier for them to give support for them. If you're a company that needs to get rid of a whole set of machines, I think reBoot can help. Best to call them before though.
cheers,
file_reaper
Sure, they're not fast machines but if you can get some form of Linux on those things and install BOINC, you're in business. I'd be running Seti@home on all of them just to piss off all the self-righteous, hypocritical folding@home think-of-the-children wankers.
Cheap laptops are a dime a dozen, but use them to make a statement.
Install Ubuntu or some other Linux system on them. Make sure they are configured and work. Try them out in several wifi sites like Starbucks or what ever.
Make SURE THEY WORK!!! Make sure they surf, can get email, word process, etc.
Make a small booklet of your configuration options and user passwords, etc. Make sure they have no personal data on them. Leave them, booklet, power supply, etc. in a public library with a note that says "Free and enjoy."
Install Freenet 0.7, give it a small bandwidth allotment and a huge datastore, hook it up to your router, and keep it running. You'll be helping people all over the world to communicate securely and anonymously.
I had a similar situation - years of accumulated "experimental" gear and not enough space. I posted on Craigslist, a couple of locals came, paid me and hauled it all away. No shipping costs.
I enjoy fixing laptops like that...fix 'em, install a nice linux distro on them that runs quickly on an older machine, and give them away to kids. I fixed up a P3 for my 4 yr old, she's playing with Mandriva and loving it. Heck, it'd do the job for some college kids too who don't have one and could use one for actual work (not much of a gaming rig).
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+.
Build a MAME out of it.
I found an old Powebook 3400C in the trash that still works (battery is shot), and I proped it up on it's side and use it as a bedside e-book reader. It's neat because when I fall asleep, it will turn off it's screen automatically; I don't need to worry about closing the book and putting it on the side... :)
fill the hard drives with lol cats first, it will brighten the day of hte guy who has to sit looking through pictures all day for kiddie porn.
Just dont get the lol cats from 4chan, cos if you accidentally get a paedobear pic in there, ur fucked.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I was looking into this and it seemed that the two biggest costs were the lcd screen and the bulb. If your a hobbiest it might be something to consider doing with one of the lcd screens in the laptops. But your still left with the rest of them.
Not sure what else you could do with them. You could donate them to some local school and say have the kids fix them up to use as some kind of club. though the children probably have better computers already the little brats.
You could try taking all the LCD screens and making one big display, sounds like too much work though. Not alot you can do with some left over laptops. I know you said you didn't want to sell them but if you sell them on ebay for parts they can sometimes grab a couple hundred bucks after shipping.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of old laptops!
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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Just sell them on eBay and have the buyer pay for S&H. S&H should be no more than $20, and with laptops that old, people don't expect the batteries to be too good. Hell, just sell them w/out the batteries and S&H will be even less.
For a while I was looking for 1Ghz T23's, just to have something to bring to class to take notes with. Prices for those hovered around $200+, I believe.
Bathtime surfing!!
and when one goes splash, just get out another.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I've got a 486dx2-100 laptop (20MB RAM, 400MB HD, dual scan colour, floppy only, no CD/DVD, PCIMCA Cat5 card) which just about runs Damn Small Linux (via Poor Man's Install floppy and copying the rest of the install off the network).
I'd like to let my two-year-old daughter play with it, but she doesn't yet have the co-ordination to use Tux Paint.
Are there any low-resource simple games for toddlers?
Ideally I'd like something which displays a particular picture and plays a sound when she presses a key; for example, "a" might show a picture of an apple and the sound of someone saying "Apple".
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
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Ok, just kidding... Well sort of. I don't know if it helps you out or not, but I know what I would do if I had an extra laptop or two lying around. I would repurpose one of them into a laptop for my 4 year old. He loves using the computer for TuxPaint and other games. I have an old computer that I set up for him, but my house's layout keeps it from being in a convenient spot for him to use. A laptop could be used by him on the couch, on the floor, in the car (while the battery lasted at least), or anywhere else. If you have any young nieces/nephews or if you have friends with young children, you could see if they want a laptop with Edubuntu installed. And speaking of Linux....
;-)
After having a laptop for my son, I would install Linux on a second spare laptop to play around with/learn Linux. Again, I'm not sure if this applies to you or not. I run Windows on all of my machines. I've wanted to try Linux out and have run a few LiveCDs (both boot-to-CD and inside VMWare), but it would be nice to have a whole system boot into Linux to try out. My two laptops are right now my work laptop (they probably wouldn't like it if I messed something up during my Linux install) and my wife's laptop (she definitely wouldn't like it if I messed something up during the Linux install). With an extra laptop, I could mess up and not really care about anything going wrong. From what I've heard, Linux shouldn't have a problem with the older systems (though I could be horribly wrong... I'm sure other users could clarify this point). So you could use one laptop as a test bed for various purposes. Get a nice system setup going, make an image of it, play around until the system is messed up, restore the image, play around some more, repeat.
Of course, if you seriously consider sending out old laptops to folks here, can I be the first in line?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
A hack that I have seen a few times is to combine the LCD screen with an old-fashioned overhead projector into a video projector. I think that a P3 laptop would have enough processing power to serve as a simple DVR/DVD player without much power/cooling requirements.
A good thing with overhead projectors is that they use cheaper bulbs than ordinary projectors. If you are good, then maybe you could replace it with something power-efficient that doesn't require active cooling.
If you are really good.. then.. an extension of the overhead projector hack would be to mount it inside a glass table, combine with a camera and get a multi-touch tabletop. A multitouch extension is coming to X11, so the only software you need to write initially would be a input driver.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I put Ubuntu on P3 laptops with WIFI cards and keep them in different rooms in the house to create "information at your fingertips" environment. They usually have google start page by default. So just type whatever question* you want answered, it gives you that. Best approximation to Omniscience that can ever be. e.g. maps, phone directory, calculator... Alternately, you can donate this configuration (plus openoffice) to a needy student who can use it quite well.
Something I've been wanting to try for a while. I've learned from past /. posts (sorry, I don't have the link) that you can build your own projector. I think it only costs about $300 and the lite bulbs will be a lot cheaper and last longer.
/. fan friend of mine and he laughed me out of the room - the case is made of wood. Personally, I think it's one of the coolest things I've seen. And Bob, the price IS RIGHT on that one.
Anyways, from my reading, I believe the most expensive part was an LCD screen, which is over $100. I'll bet you could remove the back off one of these laptops (the light has to shine thru LCD screen, I think) and use it.
I showed this website (http://www.lumenlab.com/) to a non
However, my time and money is not mine anymore (married with children), so I haven't tried it yet.
Also, MAKE magazine has some cool articles on borking your electronic stuff - such as attaching an old pda to a laptop screen and a keyboard. Etc...
I do this a lot with family who can't or doesn't want to afford a game console. There are lots of amazing games that can run on a PII. I recently made a laptop 'game console' for my brother in law (who's 14), loaded with Windows 98 and 50 games (actually about 200 games, but only 50 have icons on the desktop so as to not overwhelm him). A PII will run most of the best Windows games out there (HL, HOMM, AOW, supposedly even Civ III), not to mention all of the awesome DOS games.
:-)
The only downside is that if he plugs it in to a network, it might not last very long, but there's always hotseat multiplayer
As AKAImBatman said above, you can use the drives via USB with a simple adapter. Copy win98 directly and place back in notebook, then install.
USB Adapter
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
A good use would be to put it into a car. You could seperate the screen from the body, add keyboard, trackball, speakers, usb extension cable, maybe embed the screen in the back of one of the front seats or have it fold down like on an airplane. Add some wifi detection tools if you want to stay connected. Add some web cams for security, or tom foolery. You can probably wire it thru the fuse box, although YMMV, literally.
I have a couple of laptops that are either missing the keyboard, in whole or in part, and this would be a good project. Now I just have to convince the wife that I'm not destroying her mini-van.
I had an old P3 that died a "Heat Death" and am looking for a replacement laptop to extract the contents of that I lost when that machine bit the dust.
Two words - render farm! Yes, slower machines will take longer to do 3d renders, but if each machine can eat one frame and you have a really complex animation with tons of frames, you have yourself a nice little thing to set up to render all night for you and it might actually get done in time. Don't need all that yourself, why not rent out your renderfarm to nearby animators in the community?
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
Sears doesn't send out those big thick catalogs any more, so children all over the country are hurting for booster seats during family get-togethers.
An old laptop is thick enough to get them high enough to reach their plates.
If you recycle it through Costco's web site, they'll sometimes give you cash for it. At the very least you can get rid of stuff for free, including monitors. You tell them what you have at the site and they send you a postage paid box.
This is an obvious opportunity to upgrade the caliber of the recently commented on floppy disk launcher, DataStorm v1.0. You may not get as many shots in, but man do they pack a punch!
--David
X-forwarding and NAS are your friends. A P3's more than enough for a thin client and you could probably do the same with those P2's.
Alternatively, you could crack it open and sell the individual parts, probably for more than you could get off the whole thing. Depending on the age of the P2 laptops (and thus case size), you could probably swap out the internals for a better screen and a PicoITX board, getting at least another five good years out of them.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
They would work great as a thin client.
You could also use them in a public area like a library is a Kiosk machine. Lots of ways to do this. Opera has a built in kiosk mode (where it basically disables windows hotkeys and locks the browser full-screen). There's also a good Kiosk tool for KDE, which allows you to lock down the desktop environment.
Gee, tons of other options. A good hardened router/firewall, with an external hard drive in hand a NAS, a simple LAMP server for a blog, any number of things.
KDE (and other window managers) makes inverting the screen trivial. mount the laptop upside down under the cabinet like one of those Bose CD players. The screen flips down like in a minivan DVD player.
Add a wireless keyboard and (as you said) bammo!
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Obviously, this is going to be more and more of a problem.
But I was reading in 'Fast Company' (I think about a year ago) that per tonne, computers contain more 5 times gold than even the most valuable gold seams in the world.
So melt them buggers down, and see if you can get some more.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I am putting together a charity to ship old computers to African schools.
Please contact me if interested. AlexZavatone(spamblock)@gmail.com
http://web.mac.com/zav/iWeb/Zav-O-Matic/Off%20to%20Africa.html
http://web.mac.com/zav/iWeb/Zav-O-Matic/Namibia%202008/D3A0AB87-8276-4741-8F1B-9225C7F23CF7.html
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
You could maybe mail them to the less fortunate, C.O.D... Maybe Zoidberg could use a laptop, perhaps?
Seriously, donating them to poor slashers might not be a bad idea. And if it's C.O.D., that takes care of the delivery.
I absolutely second this. There are plenty of charities that could use this. Drop a lightweight Linux on it (xubuntu, edubuntu, etc) and many people who don't have a computer would love to have it. Plus, it builds a little bit of Linux momentum!
For example, I live in Orlando, Florida and there is a great foundation here called the Gift From God Computer Foundation. They take old computers, slap Linux on them, and give them to charities, schoolchildren, etc. A great way to give new life to your old laptops.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
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...
You could make it a giant digital picture frame which automatically displays your pictures when you upload them, and then use it as a nice gift for your mother.
Hook some soldiers up with laptops: http://soldiersangels.org/
They have the Internet on computers now?
- Copied the NT i386 CD to a machine. We'll call this the server. The i386 directory needs to be in a FAT16 partition on the machine.
- Hooked the server to the client machine (that had no CD) with a "laplink parallel cable"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LapLink_cable
- Booted both machines into DOS 6.x, either via installed-dos or from DOS boot disks.
- Used the DOS applications INTERLINK (on the client) and INTERSERVER (on the server) to connect them together. You can read more here:
http://www.qsl.net/iz7ath/web/03_digital/04_pc/DCC/english/pag03_eng.html#DUE%20PC%20ENTRAMBI%20IN%20DOS
- Used the DOS XCOPY command or the freeware XXCOPY utility to copy the i386 directory from the server to the client
- Rebooted the client with my DOS book disk and ran setup
Message me if you need more.
Support your local schools, throw edubuntu on them and give them to a few kids that could use them.
Load the 'puters up with Mame, buy some joysticks and arcade buttons, and build little desktop-sized cabinets and you've got some nice, cute little arcade machines!
F@H, Every little bit helps and if you do not know what it is: What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease? Proteins are biology's workhorses -- its "nanomachines." Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery. Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. You can help by simply running a piece of software. Folding@home is a distributed computing project -- people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.
Last year, a friend and I bought a bunch of older laptops for cheap and sold the parts on ebay to fund summer barbecues and other outings. If the laptops were common models back in their prime, you can often sell parts like cdroms, screen brackets, processors, backlight inverters, and screens for anywhere between $10 and $30 each. You'd be amazed how many people are emotionally (or financially) attached to their 10-year-old laptops and will keep buying parts just to keep them alive. We averaged about an $80 return on a $15 laptop.
Can't believe no-one has suggested a beowolf cluster of those!
How about organizing them in a ring and setting up tetri-net? Charge 50 cents a game until you have enough money to build a trebuchet. Use the trebuchet in a large Rube Goldberg machine that clubs baby seals. Charge $10 to view the machine in action.
Step2: ????
Step3: Profit!!!
At the college, we took old laptops and put a customized DSL (Damn Small Linux) install on them to boot to a desktop where the only application available was rdesktop to connect to a Windows terminal server (RDP) setup. We used these as loaners when we got a new employee whom the department neglected to order a desktop for or a dead workstation. They were a lot nicer to lug around campus than a beast of an old desktop.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
... built in UPS :)
I'm surprised no one has mentioned helping out the /. community. Find a half dozen good ideas from the Securing Your Notebook Against US Customs thread and try them on each laptop. When you cross customs with a backpack full of laptops I'm sure you'll get a chance to see which encryption scheme works!
I look forward to hearing the results in a few months, IF you are ever let out of holding...
XUBUNTU
The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got 48 hours off from the world, man
I love old laptops! I've got a couple of PIII's with busted displays. One is running Centos 5.1 with Asterisk + Freepbx, and does a fine job and running the VoIP setup in my house. The second runs Ubuntu server with TorrentFlux + MediaTomb. A perfect setup for downloading torrents via a web interface, and serving up media to my PS3 via UPnP.
you could build yourself a powerful node for a wireless mesh network. One card for client access, and one for backhaul.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Believe it or not there are poor people who might like to have your old computer. There are third world countries that could use them in their schools. http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm
http://salvationarmy.ca/?gclid=CIyxi7-pq5MCFQGnQQodzRlNnw
http://www.microsoft.com/Education/TenTips.mspx
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
or recycle them. take them to a center that takes computers. if you're not in portland, oregon there are still a list of recycling resources at the freegeek site.
Well what I did with my old desktop was I donated to a local computer shop, which turns around cleans up the equipment and replaced whatever needed to be replaced (in my the hard drive) and sell for a very inexpensive price or they themselves donate to organizations.
I use an old laptop booting off a DOS disk with BananaCom on it as a dedicated console for our core router.
Take the circuit boards out, make your own computer cases out of wood, with dovetail joints and glossy finish, and sell them sans batteries as kitchen-table web browsing terminals.
Hasan
My old laptop's LCD died. This was one of many parts that had died over the last year or two, including the HDD (twice), the motherboard, and the RAM. So I got a new Asus G1 lappy which continues to serve me well.
But what to do with the old lappy? Well, it still boots up and connects to an external display... Bingo, a web server! Generally, if you're running a personal server on your home connection, as long as you're not adversely affecting your ISP's network, they won't care (or know about it). If your battery still works (mine does not, alas), you've even got a built-in UPS!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
ie, airport security.
;)
totally randomize the drive that's in there, and either install an os or not (your choice).
but give them to random people (that, itself, is a problem on its own) and then have them go thru the checkpoints with their new laptops.
what this does is burden down the actors in our favorite Security Theater(tm). a little civil disobedience, if you will?
if you need to feel better about it, install an ubuntu or some fave distro of yours. I guess that's better than dd if=/dev/random across the whole disk. but my point is to get as many people as possible SLOWING DOWN THE SYSTEM so that people who make/own these stupid decisions will finally see that it accomplishes nothing and that a 'forced frisking' at the border for simply daring to bring a laptop or media across the border is AGAINST THE WILL AND FREEDOM of We, The People.
ok, I admit this isn't going to happen in any large scale. but imagine if it could. if we could get enough people to do their part to show those in control that this current state of 'security' is not acceptable and that it accomplishes nothing but to add more fear to the populace.
so that's my idea. dd random stuff to their drives or install an os; but give them away and get people to go thru customs with these. soon, they would grow tired of having to 'decode' random disk patterns and maybe they'll shift to ACTUAL detective work instead of dragneting anyone who crosses a border.
oh, and if customs needs to 'seize' that laptop, well, so what! who cares. it will cost them more in manpower and storage (physical place to hold 'evidence') than the random broken lappie is worth! so there's that, at least
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Take a look at http://www.pbskids.org/ plenty of stuff there. My 2 year old loves it.
You can put a 10/100 hub on your conn and tap packets leaving/entering your LAN. Even better would be a GUI for a quick look at current utilization and port activity. Perhaps also a top 5 ip addrs knocking on the door. With a second NIC you can policy data coming in but these laptops prob don't have enough power for that.
Here (Eugene Oregon) we have a place called Next Step. They recycle electronic stuff.
Usable is repaired and sold, usable parts salvaged, toxic stuff stripped out, remainder recycled.
Look for a similar place near you.
It's a project I'm working on. I'm one of those unfortunates with an analog OnStar box that can't be upgraded (or rather, Chevy refuse to) so I did some research and found this (and many others), remembered how cool the Empeg Car was so got inspired to build one for the 21st century that'd do GPS navigation and play DVDs as well as being an MP3 jukebox.
:-)
One of these days I'll actually finish it and post pictures.
... well, geez ... this should be obvious:
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/pub/seascience/artreef.html
1) Chuck 'em in the sea
2) Grow reef
3) Tourists
4) PROFIT!
In case you don't live near an ocean, follow the Internet IP's model: label them with "Chuck me into the sea!", and then throw them in the general direction of the ocean . . . like, in you next door neighbor's backyard . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Attach some wooden legs to them and use them as end tables. I have made many a nice furniture piece using old computers. Including a coffee table, night stands, and even a fish tank. The last one isn't finished yet because of leak issues.
Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
www.m1
Format them, install *nix on them, take them across the boarder. Disposed of for free!
Find a church with Missionaries and donate it to them.
I get lots of old computers so I make little projects out of them like a firewall or make it a media receiver, I turn an old AMD laptop in to a GeeXbox (http://geexbox.org/en/index.html)
Strip out the component, made a case so the laptop was speed vertical
wall mounted it, add an IR receiver, plug it in to my network, feed the sound to my Hi-Fi
Now I can access my music for downstairs. I tried to get X11 forwarding with sound so I could watch HD but It was a bit funky.
Henry Rollins in his last spoken word tour brought up a good idea... pack it full of good, kick ass MP3's and mail it to a college in Iran. Subversion from the bottom up...
Bad choice -- Clay pigeons don't spray plastic shards and toxic chemicals everywhere.
When I have shot up laptops or other electronics, I've pulled the batteries and screens, and then set up a tarp underneath where they were hanging so I could clean up easily.
Laptops only make good targets because of the keys -- try stripping them off one at a time from 200 yards. But I can just as easily use a $10 keyboard for that. The one time I did set up a laptop to shoot at, we put it with the targets for people with pistols -- I got maybe 3 shots at it before someone took a 12ga to it.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
People continue to mention kids and poor people, but what about poor college kids? Especially with the cost of tuition being jacked up all the time, as a student myself I would say that you should find the closest university and see if there's some students who wouldn't mind a good word processor computer. I have a laptop now, going into my third year of college, but the first two years of using university machines are not something I want to look back on.
Just use an old version of Windows or a small Linux like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux and install a media player that can play CDs and DVDs.
Give them out to friends and family members that are too poor to afford their own CD player or DVD player.
For Windows there is the K-Lite Codex Pack that has a DVD player in it and Media Player Light. You don't need a modern media player for that.
Also if they have a built in modem, they can have a cheap dial-up Internet terminal.
Many charities will take them as donations, like those who donate computers to a third world nation like Wings of Hope. You can also donate them to poor public schools and churches who would use them or sell them off at a flea market when they try to get rid of surplus equipment, books, computers, etc. I am sure you can write off each laptop for like $100 each, as they wouldn't be worth any more than that.
The only way you can get more than that is to have a retro computing collector contact you to buy a certain brand of laptop that can run an old version of MS-DOS, OS/2, BeOS, etc that the newer laptops won't run. It would have to be one that has driver support for a classic OS that is no longer made or supported anymore. Some retro computing fans still want to run their old legacy software and new laptops won't do that, and virtual machines aren't good enough to run the old video games 100% the way they should be run. MS-DOS and DOS gamers want hardware that isn't Winmodem type in which the driver has the firmware they want 100% driver support in DOS so it has to be a real modem not a winmodem, it has to be a VESA compatible video card, and a sound blaster 16 audio card, and maybe a network card that has DOS drivers.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Care to provide some details on how? Diskless cn be done with knoppix, but that's hardly instant-on...
Were that I say, pancakes?
Just like half the other posters, I'd gladly take a P3 off your hands, and even give you a few dollars for your time! My mom's been talking about getting a computer recently, and one of these would probably be just fine for her.
No big deal on shipping - most ebay sellers will list that separately from the sales price.
If you don't want to futz with them (get them working again), then: (1) post on Craigs List under Free and "Porch Pickup" and do that or (2) post on ebay with all defects (needs battery, cracked case, powers up etc), the manufacturer/model number and what it has (10GB HDD, 128MB RAM, etc) with $1 starting price and $15 for shipping. I ship many repaired desktop towers for $20 that have full CD/HDD/metal cases - I suspect your laptops will ship in the (newer/larger) post office priority mail box for $12 with some padding.
If you have a P2/3-500Mhz or faster you can run Xubuntu Linux fine (I'm using one for work travel and presentations now with the latest 8.04 loaded - battery is bad but the rest is ok) And have used a P2-350Mhz with Xubuntu 6.06 since it has a good battery. I save any files on a USB flash drive anyway. Open Office productivity suite, Firefox browser, Thunderbird email, and Gimp are my main tools (you can try these out on Windows too).
I only hear about laptops and desktops "being too old/slow for anything by people living in Windows... 98SE worked ok for P2's, needed P3/P4's for XP, need multicore/big ram for Vista...
I just set up a Xubuntu 8.04 server with LTSP.org for the neighbors kids (to get them off Mom & Dad's pc). The server is P3-733Mhz, one client is P2-233Mhz - that only displays/keyboard/mouse activity for that user logged into the server while the other kid is local on the server. Also installed Dansguardian to protect the kids from the shadier side of the internet. Happy kids and Parents.
I have set up a small manufacturing company based on Linux and LTSP - from receptionist to shipping department for $50 in purchased equipment (the rest was considered "scrap - too old to use" by the those getting rid of it. Great for bootstrapping new businesses.
Keep in mind, the typical recycling center just shreds equipment (there are some impressive YouTube videos if you search). This takes a significant amount of energy and nasty chemicals to sort, remelt, and create new computer equipment from. This especially includes computer manufacturers taking returns (they want old units out of circulation so you buy new ones they make). Refurbishing/reusing allows people to avoid the expense and environmental issues of a few upgrade cycles.
For some more ideas see a project of mine (Green Land PC) I'm sure there is someone near your location (craig's list is the quickest way to locate) for local support. If you can cover shipping I can suggest alternatives or find homes for them.
Make one of the beefier laptops a car pc - any additional parts you might need, how-to's, and a pretty decent community can be found at mp3car.com.
Having GPS, wifi, and a way to play media in the car? awesome times.
No one has suggested it yet, but I recommend you try building a Beowulf cluster. Just for fun. And for added fun, make it a DOS Beowulf. Follow the step-by-step at building your own low-cost supercomputing cluster. If you have two or more old machines, the cost can probably be kept under $10. The machines don't need a lot of memory, but they must have a working parallel port.
Any laptop with a real serial port will be treated like gold and gladly put to good use at any research lab as a data logging tool connecting to some oddball piece of scientific equipment. Computers age much faster than instruments, and so often the interface software needs some old out of date OS and hardware to run. Try giving a call to the research focused department of your choice at your local university- and try and talk to the lab folk doing research, not the IT support who deal with student & email issues.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Check here: http://www.greensight.com/CostcoTrades/Common/equiptypes.aspx?SiteXfrMsg=1 Even if they don't give you a Costco Cash Card for it, they will recycle it for free.
You can get some good cash by bringing the laptops to a metal recycling place. most take computer equipment now because they have all sorts of valuable metals inside like copper.
http://magicjack.com/ . YMMV, but apparently this little device plugs into the back of a USB port and you then plug any phone into the back of the device. As long as the software is running, for $40/year you are supposed to receive unlimited local and long-distance calling. You must have a computer running 24/7 if you plan for your phone to work 24/7. It doesn't make sense to keep a desktop with a 250W power-supply running 24/7 just to have a working phone -- in some markets, the money you save on the phone service might just be diverted to your electric bill. However, with an old laptop computer that has a tiny power supply and really isn't good for much else, this might make sense. I've read some reviews about this thing that are positive and some that are negative... don't buy it without investigating it, their customer service is nearly nonexistent, but there are other people out there who seem happy with their $40/year local and LD phone service.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
Since most newer laptops don't have a serial port, I always keep an aging laptop connected to my switches, routers and firewalls (via serial interface). It saved my ass a few time after an "ip route" command gone bad kicked me out. It sure beats going down the datacenter in a hurry.
Servo controller. Give it legs and shock your neighbors.
There is a gentleman by the name of Ken who runs a business in the Texas area refurbishing old computers for kids who normally wouldn't have them, and you can probably get hold of him via his blog, Blog of Helios (http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/). That would be a very nice thing to do! Beats the gas and matches thing I saw, hands down.
There comes a time in the life of every project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.
1) MythTV front end
2) NAS
3) Firewall/Gateway (think Astaro)
4) Got kids? If so, no need for them to use your machines
5) Home automation
6) Target practice
7) Give one to me
Well, why not?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Give them out to the neighborhood kids on Halloween instead of candy. Of course, if the laptops really are that old, you may end up getting your house TP'ed by the more tech-savvy kids.
And, laptops are low-profile. Shove them in a closet or under your desk. If they'll run too hot, spend $5 and get one of those cooling-pads with fans built in. remote control the laptop server whenever you need to. If you need console access-- it has a built-in keyboard, mouse and screen.
If you can fit 2 nics in them, they'll make excellent firewall appliances. Most laptops will come with a NIC built-in. Add a second PC-MCIA nic. If they're P2/P3, they might even have a modem built in. You can add fax-capabilities onto the server. Heck, if you're ambitious enough, set it up as a PBX. Have fun automatically routing telemarketers to an eternal on-hold "Chocolate Rain" message. Automatically reply to fax-spam with Hello.JPG.
If you are going to go the donation route, then look into making a portable lab for a school. Install wireless nics on each computer, and configure them to talk nicely to a wireless router. Then donate the whole shebang to a school. Schools need a computers for a lot of students, but not necessarily all at once. A lab of 10-20 computers that can be moved room-to-room is perfect for a lesson that needs computer access in a place other than a computer lab. (Taking it into a science lab so they can run spreadsheet calculations on experiment results, eg).
If it's a P3, it should be powerful enough to make a usable HTPC out of. Most P3 laptops I've seen have TV-Out built into them. Hook them up to a TV. Transfer media files to it as needed (I assume they have a 8-12GB HDD). Alternately, slap a large-capacity USB hard drive onto it and make it double as a fileserver.
Lots of uses.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I always wanted to turn an old laptop, preferably with broken case, into an Ambient Scouting Device For Looking Around The Net.
Imagine a digital picture frame, enhanced with the capability to tell you what interesting things happen around you - Mails you receive, Posts on your favourite Blogs, News from several sources, what stars are out on the current night... whatever. Now, what is "interesing" for the user is, of course, hard to determine. This is an area where you can get creative with software: From simple filtering of RSS feeds to sending agents out into the WorldWideWilderness, this should be the interesting part for hackers.
Hardware-wise, I thought of replacing the hard drive with some solid-state-memory and mounting the necessary components into a nice wooden frame. Turn off all unneccessary parts in order to save energy, and you get a nice info display.
I have an old PII/266 which runs DSL (Damn Small Linux) very nicely. I put XMMS on it, and hooked the speaker out to one of the alternate audio inputs on my stereo. It's not phenomenally high quality stereo, but at least better than most FM reception, and you've got hundreds (thousands?) of online radio stations to pick from.
DSL has some problems, such as shutting down the system if I close the lid on the laptop, and then not recovering the ethernet connection when I open it up again, but for the most part, it's better than tossing out the laptop. It's a lot smaller and cleaner looking than trying to get a full blown system with a monitor and keyboard to do the same thing.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Old laptops are great for customizable routers and proxies (try m0n0wall... and yes I know it's FreeBSD-basednot Linux)
They're also good for household webservers... streaming audio servers or streaming audio clients.
They're decent on power and generate relatively little heat, and for these tasks, you might go into the BIOS and even UNDER-CLOCK the CPU. You would also use a slimmed-down OS install and possibly no desktop (look at web-based admin tools like WebMin and the like) if you'd rather not deal with remote console access.
Or give them to a charity that wipes the drives and installs Linux. Anything above 266 Mhz is usable enough for studying and schoolwork, or email and some web browsing. Typically you can max out the memory on these things for under $10 if you find larger (compatible) memory on eBay.
I'll take another two-and gladly pay for shipping. My laptop is great for babysitting or distracting young cousins, and I'd love a linux box that I can turn into a dedicated toy-kid I'd mostly be giving it too has a desktop that's running Window's ME so the speed could be an improvement. It'd save fights over who gets my laptop 'cause linux kids games are cooler than anything I've got.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Here at the Lab I work at (U of Toronto), we use a bunch of old laptops as print servers and Queue machines. They don't need the screen to be on all the time, and acting as a server queue is not resource intensive at all. I suggest donate them to schools as servers.
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
what about old laptops with mild water damage? - Darrin J Viccione
Darrin J Viccione
The one reason that older Laptops retain value after their life expectancy have run out is that they are complete compact computers that comes with screen, keyboard, storage ready to use right there and now.
...yes..it's more compatible with my old style centronic port rather than those windowsy modern equivalents that absolutely wants to control all the hardware by itself... this old unit has full "dos" control and can run old "protel" software to create those Nice Direct-to-plotter pcb layouts that make the life of a nerd a bit easier and cheaper.
What do I use them for?
I've refurbished one of the smallest laptops in the world (3010ct) from Toshiba (Weighs around 1.2 kg) as a lightweight practical surfing machine that I can take with me anywhere (take THAT pricey Macbook AIR!) cost me 15 dollars plus 10 bucks for the wireless CF card + adapter - downloaded some russian win 98 usb hack to give it usb powers + some wifi cf hack to give it wifi...voila...it's a fantastic Wireless surfer.
I've got a couple of nice IBM 600's that I've turned into portable Commodore 64's! Thanks to FRODO it instantly boots into a Commodore 64 within 10 seconds (take THAT you SLOW SLOOOW booting modern pcs that take 1-2 minutes to boot win xp!) This one can play all the cool games of our past years...and provide a nice prototyping platform to quickly try out some programming theories...
I've turned my Olivetti Echos 100E into a super-Eprom-Programming station! Yes - Todays modern PCs'doesnt come with Parallel or Serial ports (sure...usb is some sort of ultra fast serial port..but it doesnt work...and converterboards suck in general so...) I use this one to burn EPROMS with those nice 80-90's eprom programmers!
I've turned my other laptop into a Plotting Machine to make PCB's (Printed Circuit boards)
So yes - There's life in them old lappies still! I love'em!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Use an old mouse (optical probably works better) for the sensor, attach to a long-period pendulum, write some software for filtering and display, and keep track of local seismic activity.
Another option: I was able to donate an ancient, not-great-when-it-was-new lap-top to the local community center.
It was virtually useless to me, but they loved it. Some of the kids they work with are very techie-inclined, but their families can't afford even one computer. The center has computers that they can use, but of course they can't let the kids do anything that might mess them up. So an anchient, free, laptop was just the thing. First the some of the kids had fun figuring out how to work the Linux. And then since it was so old, they could let the kids who loved to tinker with things go to town on it, without worrying that they might break it. Great fun was had by all.
Just be glad he was buying cigarettes and not his next fix-in-a-needle.
Desperate people will use any story they have to get cash. They will evoke tears, uncontrollable sobbing, etc. I've offered to buy food, only for that person complain about allergies. So if I give away money, I do it expecting that it's only to get the person one step closer to his drug fix.
Tiger Direct offers and excellent alternative. The company offers fixed amount gift certifies for used equipment. The best part? They will provide you a prepaid shipping label -- even for heave desktop systems.
While recycling your electronics probably will not make you rich, the recovered cash and closet space makes it worth it. You also get the bonus of knowing that your used tech will staying out of the landfill.
Donate it to someone local. I have been in need of an older/cheap laptop for quite a while. I'm sure there are a lot of people near you who could give it quite a few more years of use.
You could get together with some friends and start a non profit to take old computers, repair them, load you fav distro on them and give them to kids that can't afford them. I know of three non profits in my area that have recently started to do this.
my laptop has a cracked screen so it became my media box for my 34in tv in my living room. it's like a 645mhz with a dvd rom drive.
Build or find an arcade cabinet and use one of the computers as a MAME emulator. You can use an old monitor or TV for a bigger display, and you can even build an arcade-style joystick by taking apart a cheap PS2 controller and hooking up arcade buttons to it. There are lots of places that sell the buttons as well as plenty of tutorials on how to build joystick controllers. Here's a couple sites: http://www.xgaming.com/arcade_buttons.shtml http://wrongcrowd.com/arcade/parts.shtml
Put Linux on one, plug in a webcam, and use Motion to turn it into a motion-sensing security camera.
Open up the Li-ion batteries and use the (hopefully 18650) cells to power torches from sites like DealExtreme. I had a Pentium 133mHz IMB Thinkpad that was a bad eBay purchase, the battery wouldn't take charge. I opened up the battery pack and found eight out of twelve useable 17500 cells (these can be used in place of a 3xAAA battery holder).
Be warned that any short circuiting during the dismantling procedure will cause the batteries to eject toxic gas and possibly catch on fire.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone have a way to turn them into some sort of rack KBM display for server monitor/input? It tears me up to order the rack screens/keyboards for big money, then toss out surplus old laptops that are the same thing w/out the multiple inputs. P
-- My dog can beat up your dog.
What else would you expect? more seriously though...could install it in your car and use it for a nav system. A PIII laptop should not have a problem running map software with a GPS and maybe playing MP3's at the same time. You could get one of the in-dash touch screens for $300 and then hide the laptop under the seat
Curious about Storage and Virtualization? Check out
Old laptops are still plenty useful. I know a few people who would love to have an old laptop, and I love refurbishing these things for people who can use them. Hell, a nice PIII would be a welcome replacement for my old PII.
On my ten-year-old laptop, I installed a text-to-speech program (festival) and wrote some bash & python scripts to time kickboxing warmups and workouts. It's like having Stephen Hawking there with a stopwatch telling me exactly what to do and when (I even wrote some randomization scripts so that it's different every time). For someone who has poor self-motivation, having the computer tell me what do with precise timing makes it difficult to get away with cheating.
Mobile Beowulf Cluster
[Rent This Space]
There are several Environmental Disposal and Recycling Services out there that have some good, no cost programs in place. If you were in Canada for instance, I'd recommend contacting the Electronic Recycling Association (link provided below). ERA for instance can collect old computers for donation and recycling in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Toronto, and across Canada. They have different programs setup depending on whether it's a private individual or a business that is making the donation.
I'm certain that most provincial or state governements in North America can provide many other options or contact information for other such organizations.
http://www.era.ca/
Life..."
Send them to the 'Chair Force'...
They seem to want computers, foreign and domestic, these days...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Be on the WAN, while on the can.
They're cool for low-power silent servers. I have a couple p2 toshibas running BSD and they've been working great for years.
Take out the optical drive in each of the laptops, attach blades to the spinning part with some duct take, and duct tape together an enclosure using the rest of the laptops, and then enjoy a silicon smoothie. Or better yet, get wheels that power themselves by the USB ports, and race the new laptop-karts.
Take the (wiped) laptop to Starbucks. Sit down and enjoy a frothy drink. When no one is looking, get up and leave, without the computer. Think Bookcrossing but for laptops.
I have it on very good authority that construction vehicles are easy to siphon. Of course, you have to be careful to distinguish if it's gas or diesel.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Most of these projects run windows on the laptop. What would be nice is a small linux distro, pre-set-up to run from flash (replace hard drive with flash card) and:
a) Get on net wirelessly
b) Suck down new pictures from RSS feeds or flickr
c) Be pretty foolproof, handle unplugging, battery death etc.
d) Allow remote ssh/vnc administration. (Easy)
Perhaps the chumby OS could be adapted?
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
MythTV frontends only need a about 667 MHz P3 to render video and most of them have s-video, they are small and use little power so they are perfect for descrete media comps.
All you need is a screwdriver and a bucket. One is for punching a hole in the bottom of the tank, the other is for collecting what drains out.
I'll leave the deduction of which is for what as an exercise for the reader.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Old laptops make great thin clients. This is rarely interesting in the home, but there are plenty of places they can be put to good use.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
You can probably easily donate them to a local public school or charity...
How do you take a picture of the best moment of your life?
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.
I'm selling my powerbook mac, made in 1994. Motorola processor, HD??, Ram memory??, No power supply and batteries are oxidized. $1000 + FedEx tax from Brazil. It looks great! Ideal for Mac Museum! Contact me if you want.
-- Simon said: Die!
Having one or two antique machines around to act as specialized servers can be useful - a DNS/DHCP box, a print server, whatever. And it's useful to have a couple of screens scattered around the house for casual browsing, music playing, etc. But after that you're really much better off managing your server applications on a current machine, either as applications on the primary machine or as virtual machines if you need extra security or isolation. Modern CPUs may use more power than old ones, but if you're already running one, you're just adding a few cycles to it and using a bit more RAM, compared to each older machine needing to fire up RAM, video cards, network interfaces, disks, etc.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Okay, it's Slashdot, I'm probably the 99th person to suggest this...
:)
I get old laptops from my employer on a fairly regular basis. They are too old and slow for our staff to use, but we just can bring ourselves to throwing them away.
I use them as file, print, and special purpose (backup, jukebox, entertainment) servers at home. It's amazing what you can do with Linux and one or more cheap USB HDDs and network adapters (if it is a REALLY old laptop).
They make perfect home servers because by their nature- they are very energy efficient. I've also found they actually stack quite nicely, since once you have Linux installed- you don't need to use the screen or keyboard. You can use the one on top as a console.
If the batteries still have a litte bit of life left in them- you've got built-in UPS capabilities too. If the battery is toast- I recommend just pulling it. The charging circuit is just wasting power and you've got a minimal risk of fire if the battery goes really bad and it overheats.
Cluster install Linux Beowulf config, then install open source weather prediction algorythims. Typical results can provide extremely accurate next-day forecast models. With the hardware you mention, processing should take 24 hours per forecast.
I ran an old 32MB Compaq Armada with a cracked case and no battery for a couple of years as my home firewall, running OBSD. Sat on a bookshelf drawing little power and quietly did its job. I rarely opened it up. Ended up replacing it with a Soekris box when the HD started to whine.
Try to invent a sport "Laptop throwing".
I get your point but consider that people write crap in the English language however that doesn't mean the English language is crap. The same is true of BASIC.
He introduced a bunch of kids to the concept of computer programming. That was the original purpose of BASIC (and LOGO while I'm at it). The fact that BASIC was often misused is not the fault of the language.
I remember the time when having BASIC as a computer skill was an asset. I started programming in FORTRAN, so BASIC seemed like a gift from the gods at the time.
You're right, BASIC is pretty retro however if it encourages someone to get more interested in programming as a career what's the problem with that?
OK, that was way off topic. My apologies.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I have an Old Dell C610 that I am using with Clarkconnect right ow. IN fact, I will be using squid as a proxy server with it. :)
... and use it as a tool to monitor our Asterisk system.
Turn the display around so it closes with the LCD outwards, and have them cycle art via the network or it's own drive - put a picture frame over them and you'll have a dynamic art display! You could do family photos, downloaded art, etc.
More is Better.
I mean, you *could* build one out of stone ... but where's the fun in that?
Winners tell stories while losers yell deal.
Guess what - a computer that old that doesn't run commonly used software (in others, MS Office, and an up to date web browser) is of no more interest to most non-profit groups that it is to you. They can buy a new system for $500 and likely have no interest in whatever ancient laptops are cluttering up you garage.
If you can't think of a use for it, and you can't think of anyone in your immediate circle that would want it, then it's better to pass it on to whatever group in your town can at least take a stab at recycling it.
Three Squirrels
Make a cheap car-puter/dvd player for your kids. You could mount it almost anywhere, or even recess it into the dash...
... and if you were really keen, you could use a 3G connection card to triangulate your position as a poor man's GPS.
You could set it up for war-driving, wire it into your sound system, add an external drive that you could plug in (and use for transfers)
... or you could set it up and pretend to be a cop...
If any of them are in working order, you could put on a copy of Damn Small Linux, and run a copy of Folding@home... Just an idea...
I currently have an IBM thinkpad A21p (Mobile P3 850, clocks itself down to 700) as my firewall/dhcp system. Linux, firewall builder, blah blah blah. It has a xircom modem/eth and an internal eth, it's very handy. The internal UPS is gravy... the low power is enough to convince me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Like many posters here, I'm using old laptops with FreeBSD for a ton of various little tasks. I have one that serves as a squid-cache, router/firewall, nat, dhcp, dns, etc server for my home network; one that sits at my employer's network and provides shoutcast servers (6mbps is expensive for me, but cheap for them); I have two I use for "broadcasters" - hooked up to my music collection at home and sending music to the aforementioned server. I could probably replace my main webserver with one, but don't want to quite yet - maybe when I get a throwaway that's a little more powerful. And I just got one I'm considering hanging in the kitchen upside-down with a keyboard-arm.
Poor means hoping the toothache goes away.
There are several things you can do with laptops: -picture frames -robot control computers -clusters -if they run blender or other 3d programs you can use them as a render farm -a basic browser computer for your living room -a music computer (mp3 player) for home/car -a terminal for a home automation system (that's what I am doing) -start a collection I have a Macintosh powerbook collection. I have a website at http://www.ryonix.com/powerbookmuseum/ I have over 20 Powerbooks from 1991 to 2004. It can be a bit obsessive though. And people will want to give you desktop computers as well and you will have trouble turning them down and you will get a huge pile of junk,etc..
1/ Turn them into additional monitors. Use http://www.maxivista.com/ 2/ What about an Arcade Game machine? Asteroids, PacMac, Space Invader, etc. Use Mame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME 3/ Digital picture frames, as already proposed. Use http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_picture_frame.html, but please be ecology friendly.
There was an article on here some time ago about how to do this. Its quite easy if time consuming. 1) dismantle. 2) turn the screen back to front. 3) mount in a box with the "guts" behind the screen. Mine ( made from and old mac wallstreet) has an ethernet port so uploading new pix to it is straightforward.
Rip all the batteries out, throw 'em in an old Dodge Dart, and you've got an electric car.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
My barber has a sign up in front of his barber chair asking for donations of old laptops.
I've been helping him renovate them and give them to 'deserving causes' who need laptops but can't afford one. (think poor families with kids who need them for school/college or single parents etc).
From the feedback we've got, it really does help fill a need in our the local community.
Sorry to go so far OT, but the parent poster is wildly misleading about the process of removing the fuel pump. "...removing the in tank fuel pump (not too hard on many cars)..."
The in-tank fuel pump is attached to a "manhole" opening on the top of the tank. Since the tank is mounted under the car this means removal requires first removing the gas tank, a nontrivial task. In the US market, the overwhelming majority require removal of the tank in order to service the in-tank fuel pump.
The only exceptions I know of were 2 European manufacturers' products, all from the early 80's through early 90's. There may be others, but I do not have 1st hand knowledge of them.
Hey, if I'm gonna take off on a tangent, I'm gonna take it well past the limits of sanity.
I know a lot of people smash tend to have "smash a car!" type charities. It might be possible that if you have enough laptops people would pay to smash them with the weapon of their choice. I'm sure if you got in touch with your local high school events council they'd like the idea.
It reminds me of the story of the Russian farmer. When Communism fell in 1990, foreigners came through towns and found some using the original equipment acquired in the 1920's. They used it because "it still worked." They didn't realize that for the amount of time and money they put in maintenance, they could be renting a new, vastly more efficient pieces of equipment.
Let them go. They aren't worth spending hours messing with.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
I'm not saying that BASIC didn't have its good points. It was certainly accessible, and friendly, and that makes up for its clunkiness to some extent. However, certain things like easy and unlimited GOTOs and not having to define variables (which sound nice to beginners) are actually a PITA in the long run, getting the learner into bad practices and making their code hard to debug.
By the way, I'll point out that the designers of the *original* 1960s BASIC apparently disliked a lot of the bastardisations made when it appeared on the first microcomputers (i.e. the ones which essentially defined BASIC for a generation, and which I'm criticising here). I don't know enough about their BASIC to say if it was better, and it's ultimately irrelevant since what we're essentially discussing is "stereotypical microcomputer BASIC". I started programming in FORTRAN, so BASIC seemed like a gift from the gods at the time. I've never used Fortran, so I can't comment on that, but even BASIC was better than the competition 30-40 years ago, it doesn't make it a good language today. You're right, BASIC is pretty retro however if it encourages someone to get more interested in programming as a career what's the problem with that? Because there must exist today (or could exist, if someone were bothered) far more suitable languages for beginners to get into than old-school BASIC. Languages that would be built around structured programming, but were just as easy to use- if not easier- than BASIC.
The problem is that BASIC encourages all sorts of horrible programming habits that are hard to get out of and that don't reflect modern software development anyway. Not that they ever reflected *good* software development...
And even where some limitations of the language/implementation may have been forgivable on a low-powered, small-memory 8-bit home micro, there is no good reason for sticking with them on a modern high-powered PC! (Or anything at least as fast as a 286 for that matter...)
Old-style BASICs are no longer even remotely standard, so that doesn't come into play.
Such BASICs may have been *my* first computer language, but I can see- and agree with- why they were so criticised and damned now.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
In the future there will be few notebook machines of the PII/PIII era that actually work. Hence, you could refurbish these humble notebooks with new batteries, keyboards, power cords, optical disks, fixed disks and CCFL tubes. The parts can be found now, they will be hard to come by in days to come. The expenditure may seem outlandish but it is necessary to get a future classic retro-notebook, with collectible value.
Much like how some people use and maintain classic cars there will come a time when people maintain and use classic computers. A vintage IBM from before it all went Lenovo with as-new functionality will command a premium, Toshibas and VAIOs will do too. The HPs and Dells of that era had flimsy cases and could completely vanish, much like the Ford Cortina or anything ever made by British Leyland (except for the old Mini or earlier Minor).
The notebooks have to work if they are to have value in the future. Much like how a classic car actually works and gets from A to B with style, the refurbished PII/PIII retro classic (with wifi card) will be able to run a browser and get from virtual A to B in style.
If the investment route is not for you then give away the machines to someone that can get toy value from them, otherwise cannot your local council dispose them for a small fee?
I recently heard from someone who manages a mailroom in a large firm that _none_ of her staff knew how to type, so they were really unable to apply to move up to any other job in the organization.
They were locked into the low end job slot.
I got an old laptop, erased Windows from its tiny old hard drive, set it up to boot DOS (FreeDOS, I think) and installed an autoexec file to run an old copy of Typing Tutor III -- which is still probably the best thing going to learn the home row then slowly add keys and build speed and sequences.
You can still find it for sale, look around.
No eye candy, no other programs, no mouse, nothing to fiddle with.
It remembers different people so they all are using it -- and now they're competing with each other to get faster and better.
Typing Tutor was an incredible simple DOS program.
Enter your name. It remembers where you left off and what you need next.
And it has a lovely little Letter Invaders game -- falling letters, lower case and upper case, that's tied to your current level of keyboard experience.
Put headphones on the laptop so nobody bothers the student because of the music it plays.
There's _no_garbage_ on this setup. I pulled out the floppy/CD drive modules.
All it does is -- teach people to type.
Show them just the home row ASDF JKL; and tell them where to put their fingers at the start.
That's all you need.
** I know it seems incredible but there are a _lot_ of adults still who never learned to use a keyboard. Poor family. Poor schools with no tech at all. No tools, no teachers.
Help someone out with your old laptops. Set one up so you know it works as needed and then shop it around.
Figure it's a throwaway -- tie it down maybe, but make clear it's a doorstop, tell people they can borrow it, take it home, it's not worth stealing.
All it can do is teach.
These laptops can probably do 80-90% of what you need your computer for. Leave THEM on all day for web browsing, email, music, etc., and only turn your high-power computers on when you really need them (read: for gaming). If you're running any home server processes that need to be online 24-7, these would be perfect for that as well. I'm thinking of using an old Pentium as my 24-hour computer/server, with an external HDD for my /home directory that can be shared with my dual-core AMD.
You're still confusing language with its implementation.
;-)
I don't disagree that bad programming is bad but you never resopnded to my assertion that BASIC was designed as an *introduction* to programming. BASIC does not, as you assert, promote bad programming practices. It's just a language, a set of tools. Your argument runs along the lines that "You can kill someone with a salad fork". Well, yeah, you can but, Hollywood excepted, who would do such a thing?
And isn't getting your knickers in a twist over BASIC pointless? Who uses it for enterprise projects? Who even uses BASIC except as an educational tool or a point of reference?
Your knowledge of BASIC also seems flawed. You appear not to be aware that MS strongly promoted it's own version of BASIC as a development platform for a number of years.
Yeah, I'm old. And damned proud of it. Now get off my lawn
I took my old laptop, added a wireless card (along with the wired nic), put a simple firewall ruleset on which allows ports for VOIP to forward through it and then attached my wire-only grandstream ip phone. Now my ip phone is essentially wireless. I also removed the hard drive and remastered knoppix to do what I needed and now the laptop can weather power outages up to three hours. I can lug my phone/laptop combo around the house without needing to run new network connections. Longest uptime on the laptop was 144 days.
www.magicjack.com
$20+$20/yr for VOIP phone service with a USB dongle.
The laptop is a perfect 24/7 platform to support Magicjack. I know cuz I'm using an old PII laptop for exactly that... the same laptop is also serving as a DHCP server, router, WiFi access point, file server and printer server.
Save some money. Just leave it unattended for a few minutes then report it stolen.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
A stand-alone packet sniffer. This is what I use an old P3 for.
With a bit of creative modding, old laptops make great wall-mounted digital photo frames, with more interesting possibilities than the dedicated ones you can buy these days.
Low-powered home audio client. Put one in every room you want music in, and dump Amarok on them. With the lower power consumption than desktops, you could probably afford to keep them on 24/7.
Datalogger/server. Have one in the basement logging your power usage/temperature sensors/whatever about your house.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Do what I do.I put computers like the ones you have into the Computers for Kids Project here in Southeastern Kentucky.I refurbish the machines and give them to low income kids(usually routing the machines thru churches)free of charge.I do some good and the kids get a machine that they normally could not get.
Did over 500 machines last year and I already done 250+ so far this year.
Geek Hillbilly
( old laptops + Linux ) * Youth Organization = Tax deduction + warm fuzzy. In other words. Get the ones you can working with Linux. Donate them to a Boys/Girls club rec center etc, and collect the deduction. The rest go to your local e-waste center.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
here
Once you have an OS like Win98 on there, surely you can get a PCMCIA network card that works? 10 megabits, but still leaps and bounds better...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have done three things with old laptops. One I loaded Xubuntu (xubuntu.com) on for my kids to play with. They are too young to realize that it is really slow. Another is I downloaded Gcomprix, which is a live CD of the educational suite Gcompris. Gcomprix will run on dang near anything, and again, the kids love it. (http://nathguil.free.fr/gcomprix.iso) The last thing I have done is loaded Puppy Linux (puppylinux.com)on it. Puppy is a live CD that is less than 100MB, so it can run in RAM in most old machines. Puppy will run from PC cards, CF cards, flash drives, and Zip drives. You can also do a HD install with it. I have resurrected computers that others have written off. Puppy is awesomely fast and easy to use. It has every program the basic user would use.
Apply to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for funding to keep them going.
If your battery still works (mine does not, alas), you've even got a built-in UPS!
I did that for a while, but one day the power went out when I was not around, battery ran completely flat, and it never held a charge again. Now I have a laptop with a busted screen, busted network port, and no battery to find a use for.
I've had some success at placing older equipment on my local freecycle mailing list (wiping the disk first natch). That way, it doesn't end up in landfill (immediately) and someone who wants it has the hassle of collecting. Take a look at http://www.freecycle.org/ While you're at it, count how many unused mobile phones you have lying around...
Too dumb to think of an original signoff
....failing that, recycle them, because with a brand-new Acer laptop costing me ~$500, there's no point in running an old PII/PIII laptop.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Just get rid of them. Who wants old computers around their home?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
I had a right laugh building my last arcade machine and even included a jukebox of 80's music just to complete the effect.
MAME http://mamedev.org/about.html
My arcade box http://www.bikesandkites.com/mame2.html
Mike
If it weren't for old, slow laptops, a lot fewer people would know how to use Linux. Battling everyday with Mythbuntu and an Xbuntu print server sure is teaching me.
I'm not sure what the point you're making is either; I don't see how you think I'm confusing the two, nor how it would make much difference in any case. I don't disagree that bad programming is bad but you never resopnded to my assertion that BASIC was designed as an *introduction* to programming. On the contrary, the criticisms I made were specifically in the context of it being an introductory language. BASIC does not, as you assert, promote bad programming practices. It's just a language, a set of tools. The tools were designed with a specific purpose in mind, introducing beginners to programming. Since it's (in part at least) a teaching/introductory language, it's reasonable to blame it for design decisions (GOTOS, lack of structure or variable declarations) that encourage *learning* bad habits.
And even if that weren't the case (it is!), I would still blame the people who- in 2008- thought that using unstructured, obsolete BASIC to teach kids was a good idea. And isn't getting your knickers in a twist over BASIC pointless? You forget that the reason I brought this up in the first place was that people were planning on using it to teach kids. Who uses it for enterprise projects? Uh, no-one. I already made that point above. (Specifically that because it's obsolete and no longer used by many people, it doesn't even have the excuse of being standard nowadays). Who even uses BASIC except as an educational tool BINGO! That was the point I'm making. It's a ******* horrible educational tool. Your knowledge of BASIC also seems flawed. You appear not to be aware that MS strongly promoted it's own version of BASIC as a development platform for a number of years. Which version(s)? If you're talking about VB, then that does *not* count as one of the old-fashioned, non-structured BASICs ("old school BASIC") I repeatedly made clear I was referring to.
And if you're talking about some version of the original 1970s/1980s microcomputer MS BASICs, well... that was 25 years ago. Plus, just because MS might have been promoting the use of their own products, doesn't mean it was a good idea even then.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Hey mate, if you can find out the shipping costs to Ecuador I might take 'em off your hands.
Let me know how many you got and the shipping costs from where you are.
I used to something like this -- we had a Parallel - Ethernet dongle that came with a DOS "LANMAN" driver.
You configure a LANMAN bootdisk and then use the NET USE command to map a drive on a regular WinNT-based server. If you google around, you can find pre-made LANMAN disk images so you don't need to dig through MS's FTP site and do it by hand.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Keep it 100 years longer and try to sell it one more time.
Take the ones that work the best and give them tp charity or to people that you know that could use them. The ones that don't work very well can be recycled, call your local town or call the maker of those laptops and see what programs that they have.
just to clarify, I meant to give them to willing volunteers who want to bring about some change.
re-reading my post, it might seem like I'm suggesting handing them to random people. I didn't mean it that way.
sort of an 'alice's restarant' style protest.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I am living in Tanzania East Africa and try as I might, getting computers free isn't such an easy task as it is in the US. I am trying to build a computer lab to teach classes in Linux, sys-admin, and basic programming freely for the community, but all I have so far is an empty building.
Linux: When reboots are for upgrades.
I'm surprised that I didn't see this suggestion posted but why not just use network try this! http://www.maxivista.com/multi_monitor.htm You can network any old laptop and use it to extend your main computer's screen space.
trebuchet.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I'd wager it could be done with some commodity routers and perhaps even some specialized hardware. The fit-pc, for example takes 5V and claims power usage in the 3-5W range. That should run well enough on a USB power supply (or even greener using flash in place of the hdd) and provide all the functionality you could want using linux or m0n0wall.
db
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
I bought an adaptor from newegg for less than $10 which puts a laptop drive in a USB enclosure, using the USB for power. Now I can install a small Linux distro without fighting low memory, slow CPU and no CD. Or even a stripped down subset of a large distro like Fedora. The encrypted filesystem feature makes it easy to have a secure home directory for anything you don't want to share, while avoiding overhead of encryption for the open sopurce os.
Makes a great box for taking notes and the like, in text mode, and a larger version will record meetings with the addition of a webcam.
Keep in mind that if you sell it people will buy it for whatever reason. I recently just bought a replacement power switch for an old Gateway P3 computer that I'm using as a media server. I bet that guy never thought that power switch would sell because it's such a specific or niche item.
I used one old thinkpad as a large display clock (using xclock resized to the entire screen) for my elderly mother-in-law. Trouble is, the machine needed resetting everytime the power went out (batteries were cactus).
After she died, the same machine was repurposed as as a firewall/router/bids-login machine for my home network, until replaced by a $78 job WiFi router from D-Link that did the same think more reliably.