Re-using an old tech-product sounds a little weird — as they seem useless to us after some time and are no more than an e-waste. The same thought you share about the old PCs, systems or laptops that you might be having stored up in your attic store. But what if they can be modified a little and can be re-used? Never thought about it? Well then just check below what fantastic things you can do with an old PC.
1. Add iTunes and enjoy home media server
An old system probably has a slow processor and not much RAM, but a setup like that is in reality a good match for a media server’s fairly low-key system requirements. The speed of the media server depends mostly on the hard disk drive and the type of controller, so if your system supports SATA and has fast hard drives, you can expect fairly good performance even if the processor is a bit out of date. All you need is an optical drive to load music files onto the hard drive, an Ethernet card (or Wi-Fi capability) to connect to your local network to share the media files, and just sufficient RAM to run the media server. Usually you can get by with 512 MB of RAM, if all you’ll run is Windows XP as your operating system and one application. The main advantage to setting something like this up is that you can keep the media server running at all times and have quick way in to your files.
Apple iTunes is preferable, not because it’s necessarily the best media server or because it has extra features for sharing music, but because it’s exceptionally well supported. Besides, it’s also free, and it runs reliably. It’s also very easy to set up: Download the app from iTunes.com and install. Then load your music files. Now go to Edit–>Preferences. Click the Sharing tab and enable the “Share my library…” option. This makes your media files available to other devices.
2. Turn any older PC into a gaming rig
Gamers know that the most critical component on any PC is a high-end graphics card. Without one, even if you have a fast processor and loads of RAM, recent games such as Aliens vs. Predator or Left 4 Dead 2 will still run slowly. The newer graphics cards are powerful enough and provide enough RAM to handle the pixel-pushing mayhem of just about any shooter, even if the CPU is a bit outdated. You can experiment with a PC that used to be a home server and still runs the Windows Home Server operating system, and add an AsusTek 8800GTS graphics card that’s about a year old and has 512MB of memory. It’s not a DirectX 11 card, which means it won’t render the very latest games at maximum visual quality (such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2) but it does support the vast majority of newer games. This upgrade is quite easy, but you’ll need a power supply that has two six-pin PCI-Express cables, such as the Corsair VX450. That’s because the graphics card is very power-hungry and requires the extra power cables. To upgrade, first remove the old graphics card. Snap the new graphics card into the PCI Express slot and connect the PCI-E cables. You’ll need the latest graphics driver for the card you use.
3. Use your laptop as an e-mail terminal
With some older laptops, the ploy is where you set up the system and not necessarily whether it’s fast enough for every computing doings. For example, use a five year old Toshiba Satellite 4600 laptop to set up Yahoo Mail in full-screen mode (in Internet Explorer, just press F11). Though this terminal is not adequate for anything beyond basic Web browsing and e-mail, but it’s only a click away for those who just need to write a quick note or update their Facebook or Twitter status. The old Toshiba laptop is not fast enough for any other computing activities, but it has a bright screen and the keyboard works fine. You can personalize it for e-mail replies.
4. Use any netbook for home security
Believe me that an old system really works great as home security devices. They can show you who is at the front door or even detect motion and alert you to an intruder. Try it with a Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t with 1GB of RAM and an Intel Atom processor to find out if a new webcam could support motion detection on an old system. Install a free Web surveillance application like Yawcam, that supports motion detection and video recording. Setting up Yawcam is easy: You first install the app, then select the built-in webcam for your netbook. You can set up the software so that it sends you an e-mail whenever it detects motion. Another option is to install a dedicated Wi-Fi security camera, such as the D-Link DCS-1130. This camera mounts to an exterior wall and then feeds a video signal over a home wireless network to your netbook. That way, you can see who is at the front door right from your netbook, no matter what room of the house it’s in.
5. Turn an old system into a Folding@Home system
Folding@Home is a project developed at Stanford University. Once you download the client, your computer becomes a “node” on the Stanford network and runs scientific calculations to help researchers understand protein folding and, in turn, to find cures for cancer and other diseases. So if you’re particularly ambitious, you could set up multiple old computers as Folding@Home clients. The software lets you determine the percentage of computing resources you want to dedicate to the research and even when those resources will operate. I used a Toshiba Satellite 4600 laptop as a research client. This system is so old it doesn’t even support current wireless standards, so I added a 3Com Wi-Fi card. Next, I downloaded the client at Folding.stanford.edu and installed it. The app runs in the system tray in the background, you can right-click the icon to see configuration options. You can see the scientific calculations running on your laptop, but for the most part the software runs in the background so you can still use the laptop for Web or e-mail.
Tags: critical component, ethernet card, gaming rig, Graphics Card, hard disk drive, hard drives, high end graphics, key system, laptops, library option, local network, optical drive, PC, pcs systems, slow processor
i was going to throw it. you gave me a 2nd thought.