What should I do with my old laptop?

Some of us have been there. We buy a new laptop because we want better performance, but the old one is still perfectly fine. We could sell them, but we know they work perfectly and to us are worth more than the measly few dollars you get for a 2-3 year old laptop.

So what do you think I should do? I would give it away, but the one person I offered it to didnt want it (heh) and everyone else I'd be willing to give it to already has a PC and doesnt need one (my girlfriend has another old laptop of mine). Do you think I should just sell it and get a few bucks, or keep it as a backup?

Any other good ideas? What did you do?

 

What laptop is it, and what are the specs?
If its decent, you may be able to get a good sum of money, to buy an external harddrive or something like that for backup purposes.

If you can only get like $200 for it, than I would just keep it as a backup system.

K-TRON

 

If it has a little bit of power left in it I would turn it into a DVR. Spend a few bucks for a video input and IR remote and it could be a WebTV/Tivo/GamingConsole/NetworkStorage.

That's my plan when I get a new laptop.

 

keep it you never know the desperate times when your current one fail and you need a computer.

 

You know if things get desperate enough there is always Wal Mart

 

hhaha . yeah I guess there's always walmart.

The old laptop I'm talking about is a genuinely old, last generation laptop. Its an acer travelmate 292LMi, pentium M 1.5Ghz, 1 gig RAM installed, 40GB HD, ati radeon 9200m. It would still work well enough for anyone who just uses basic programs and webbrowsing. Its in pretty good shape and has no hardware defects whatsoever.

 

clean your stuff off it and donate it to a local school. mod the hell out of it as you have a new one now so go for broke and tinker around with it. or just keep it as a backup.

i have an old presario 2190 that needs a battery and a back light. it's old, it was free and i'm going to paint it and fool around with it. it works perfectly fine still for what it was designed for. those were notorious for the charger receptacle on the mobo breaking. i already took it all apart and resoldered that piece and it works just fine now.

ship it to me and i will fool around with it !!

 

The XBRITE 1280x800 screen on my old VAIO is still incredibly sexy. I don't know what I'll end up doing with the VAIO but it's going to involve watching movies.

 

I still have- or did until this year, my old Dell 3000's and even the ones with the 486dx's (used for tapping into my home router and firewalls direct). I kept my Early IBM's (pII/pIII systems and used them on my desktop, with cheap PCMCIA network cards, to run chat apps and keep forum pages open or for tapping into my net worked file server when I had it.

Your older machine is great for everything on the internet and playing music and DVD's, etc...Esp. if you install Red-Hat /Linux (it would be really fast for a linux machine; check out "Ubunto 8" http://www.ubuntu.com/ =consumer linux). You could make a small file server out of an old pIII system and put some huge HD's in it and access it on your lan remote with the laptop with wireless. Do all your internet surfing/forums/chatting on it and keep your main rig OFF the internet and never with anything new installed on it unless it "passes the mustard" on the old machine =VIRUS FILTERS!!! Save the new machine for heavy duty apps that you must have bought it for, or, if it was bought just for the heck of it, (screen realestate?) buy a nice big LCD or two and plug the old one into a dock (???) so you can still enjoy those things on the same kind of screens you got the new one for.

Or mod it out and paint it
Or yeah, give it to some needy social firm- Maybe the local library could use it or the elementary schools? Unless you're really poor, you won't get much for an old rig like that- maybe $200 on ebay (watch other auctions).

IF you're doing any kind of power-user stuff, having a 2nd system is CRITICAL to problem solving. However if you're a regular consumer, like my mom (yes I still have a mom, and she's older than me) and don't do anything wild with your computers except use them, one PC is usually fine.

I'd say dissemble it and spray paint it, but check that the paint is compatible with the laptop finish (I can't remember offhand what those cases had on them- it's been too long and I keep thinking of those IBM's which can't be painted).....

OH, one other thing you could do- buy some polycarbonate (clear?) and PVC glue and MAKE A NEW CASE that is see-through for it. Add in some cheap after-market LED fans to replace the original ones (blue!)and THEN donate it to the local library or something. They'd screw it down to a table and cover it with a piece of plastic so people could spill coffee on it and not hurt it and hook it up to their data-base so people could access the library file system on a cool-looking see-through computer, and you'd get to see your old loved system preserved "forever" in a good way for the kids and public.

Yeah!!!!

 

i would say the best thing to do is to donate it to the local school. they are always in need of spare computers, even old laptops, plus you get a tax write off. last year my company gave 15 laptops with pentium M 1.7ghz, 1.5 gig ram, 60gb HD to my high school i went to, they are using them all in the class rooms. when i went back to see how they used them 6 months later, the laptops where all in class rooms and not in admin offices or the trash. i told them that we are giving them about 30 more but with pentium M 2.0 ghz in 3 months when they are cleaned up and taking out of storage. next year will be much better cuz thats when we start giving them the duo core ones. the principal was so happy that she personally went to my company's main building and brought lunch for the entire floor. oh man that was some good eating, all the food was made by the staff of the school.

 

I would keep at least one system a backup. In case anything goes wrong with the current system, you can use the other one to get online help.