Top Five Tips On How To Use An Old Computer
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Gnomie hichez writes:
- Fix it up. If the computer’s not too old, you should be able to buy some new RAM and some more hard drive space to extend its life. Before you buy a hard drive, just make sure you know the right connections. If you have enough money, buy a new processor (at least a Pentium 3 or higher).
- Turn it into a sub-woofer! I know you’re like Coolio. Well I did it by using this PC World article. I found it quite interesting.
- Donate it or recycle it. Yeah not the coolest thing, but it’s pretty obvious.
- Turn it into a home server. As long as you have Windows 95 or higher, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. You might need to get a router and a few other things at your local computer store.
- Take it apart. If you don’t know much about computers, you can get a “how to build a computer” article and practice building a computer before you spend your hard earned cash.
BOUNS TIP: Trash it. Not recommended, but you can always do it. Just be sure to format your hard drive before you do.
8 Comments
dabrace1984
January 3rd, 2008
at 7:52pm
Rather than turning it into a Windows 95 home server, it would probably be easier to install one of the many free favors of LINUX.
Greg
January 4th, 2008
at 6:19am
Linux RAID file server… You don’t even need a P3 for that.
Miiikeee
January 4th, 2008
at 7:22am
6. Use it as a platform to experiment - Ubuntu works good on slow boxes.
Ray Merriam
January 4th, 2008
at 9:45am
The last (unnumbered) tip is dead wrong. Formatting a hard drive before throwing it away (or selling it) will not prevent someone from accessing the files that you put n that drive. It will be harder, but they can still access those files. The only safe way to sell a hard drive is to use a program that overwrites every single byte on the drive with random data several times. Yes, that will take hours - I’ve done it a few dozen times over the years when I’ve sold my old (but still good) drives after an upgrade.
If a drive needs to be thrown out, such as if it stops working, you can always destroy it yourself first. I take mine apart (you’ll need some special tools to remove those weird tiny screws that they use on the covers). Then I remove the platters and destroy them, usually scratching them with a sharp tool and then I take a pair of pliers and start bending the disc multiple times and then folding it over on itself several times. Takes a while to do that, usually less than an hour, but still faster than the several hours it would take to use a program to overwrite the drive’s data.
Several IBM hard drives I’ve hard used glass (or at least some type of material that was breakable like glass) plattters and all I had to do was break the platters to render those useless.
Larry Light
January 4th, 2008
at 10:15am
The last tip on “formatting the hard drive” is misleading.
It should say something like “nuke your hard drive” [DBAN]. Formatting does not accomplish the desired result.
Paul Higgins
January 4th, 2008
at 2:26pm
I’d suggest using a free program such a eraser to clean the drive. It isn’t over difficult, with freely available software to get information from a formated drive.
usrlocal
January 5th, 2008
at 4:19am
I did like the one about making it a sub-woofer. I would’ve never thought of that. If your a Linux user, check out my Top5 at lockergnome.
Top 5 linux uses for an old pc ~ usrlocal
May 21st, 2008
at 8:14pm
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