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Ask HN: What should I do with my old laptop?
What's the coolest way to repurpose an old laptop? I'd love to put the excess computing power to use somehow, or start building connected home/IoT stuff, but I'm mainly just interested in hearing what others have done...
- prymitive 10y agoHow about recycling it? We won't need another wind turbine if people stop looking for excuses to keep old and less power efficient devices up & running.
- voltagex_ 10y agoHow energy efficient is the recycling process? This includes transporting old electronics to somewhere else to be "recycled".
- fencepost 10y agoBear in mind though that if an older laptop displaces a comparably priced older desktop it's likely to use significantly less energy. Typical power consumption is likely to be under 30 watts even for most older laptops, with peaks still well under 100.
- astrodust 10y agoThey still consume power and generate heat. If you want something truly low power, the Raspberry Pi 3 is actually quite capable. Add on the 7" touch-screen display and it's amazing what it can do on a handful of watts.
- fencepost 10y agoYes, I understand that the Vespa can do amazing things, is fun to ride and is very economical to use. Still, I was actually looking for a car.
- khedoros 10y agoWhich recycling services would you recommend? What assurances do they provide that it will be responsibly handled? Stories like this make me think that keeping the device, even shoved into the back of my closet, is a better idea: https://theintercept.com/2016/05/10/gps-tracking-devices-catch-major-u-s-recyclers-in-improper-e-waste-exports/ https://theintercept.com/2016/05/10/gps-tracking-devices-cat... Besides, manufacturing a new device has certain environmental costs, and there's the money I'd have to pay for it, as well. What's the point where the manufacture+lifetime energy of a new device crosses the energy-use line of my current machine?
- J_Darnley 10y agoIf you don't want another wind turbine then fire up a nuke plant or two.
- glenda 10y agoIf you're willing to part with it you should consider giving it to someone that doesn't have a computer. Otherwise, just save the computer and run another operating system on it for testing or hold on to it until you find a need for it in your life.
- supersan 10y agoIf it has an HDMI port, you can install Kodi[1] on it and plug it to your TV to create a really cool media center. [1] https://kodi.tv/ https://kodi.tv/
- hbosch 10y agoI did this, but with Plex (I am a Plex user across multiple devices). I use the computer in clamshell mode with HDMI to my living room TV. Also, I use Rowmote[0] to control the computer -- an old Macbook -- from my phone and run OpenEmu[1] next to Plex for a home arcade solution. I use a Bluetooth PS3 controller for the arcade. SNES works great with Sixaxis controllers, N64 is possible. Havent tried Dolphin[2] yet... But looking forward to it. Late 2011 MBP for the curious, runs great for the above uses. 0. http://regularrateandrhythm.com/apps/rowmote-pro/ http://regularrateandrhythm.com/apps/rowmote-pro/ 1. http://openemu.org/ http://openemu.org/ 2. https://dolphin-emu.org/ https://dolphin-emu.org/
- ja27 10y agoPlex is my top use for a somewhat old laptop. I have an i3 Lenovo with a broken screen running as a headless Plex server (plus Calibre, a little light web hosting, etc.) It's the first media solution that the whole family actually uses.
- mikewhy 10y agoIf you use the SC drivers to turn the PS3 controller into an Xbox controller you can use that to control Plex Home Theatre as well. The Plex mobile apps also work as remotes. Using a PS3 controller will work in Dolphin, but you'll need multiple controller profiles (think Wiimote + nun chuck, Wiimote sideways, Classic Controller, etc). Retroarch takes a bit of the pain of setting up different controllers for emulators.
- pmontra 10y agoGood idea but remember that old computers were not much power efficient. In this and other scenarios you should evaluate how much you'll pay for power and compare it with the cost of a new appliance plus its probably smaller power bill. I confess I didn't research media center solutions but in this case a HDMI compute stick would probably consume far less power than a Core 2 Duo laptop (you might have something more power efficient). You must add the cost and power bill of the storage, unless it's already available and on for all the time you'll use the media center.
- cbanek 10y agoIf it isn't too old, there are some charities in the US that take laptops and give them to veterans. Goodwill is also a good place. Other ideas might be to purpose it for your car, or somewhere else, but that depends on how old / large / power hungry it is.
- haser_au 10y agoFirst Option: Donate it (as @cbanek and other have suggested) Second Option: Put it on the wall near your door, and have it as a generic assistant. Put the days weather, your family calendar, time until next bus/train, news headlines, etc. on it. They should change at different periods of the day to give you time relevant information (e.g. I want to know the time until the next bus in the morning, but I don't care about this when I'm home in the evening). Advanced: Have the webcam in the laptop detect when someone comes home using OpenCV or similar. Then, have that information accessible via an app (read: HTML5 webpage). That way, you should know when your kids come home in the afternoon and they forget to text you "I'm home safe". Or you can have it run a script when you come home like reading the latest news stories, reading emails, etc. The combination of microphone, web camera, battery and screen in this make it perfect for this. Your other options are to use a tablet. You could also link to the Google/Microsoft voice recognition software to listen to your commands (e.g. add Milk to the shopping list).
- burkesquires 10y agoAny particular implementations of generic assistant that you can recommend? Sounds intriguing...
- hackathonguy 10y agoSomething that doesn't come up very often: if you find an entrepreneur from Africa/Middle East/Southeast Asia/LatAm they're often very interested in purchasing second hand MacBooks or whatnot to power some new ideas :-) Ebay isn't great because there are steep customs charges which you don't necessarily have if you're selling privately.
- eli 10y agoHow is customs going to be any different whether or not eBay facilitated the sale?
- curiousgal 10y agoShipping it as a gift usually works.
- nathancahill 10y agoNo, it doesn't.
- curiousgal 10y agousually. I live in a Third World country and I pay significantly less fees when the item has been declared as a gift.
- Lorenzo45 10y agoYou could make a smart mirror using the monitor behind a one-way mirror. Haven't done it myself but I've seen tutorials online before.
- tony-allan 10y agoA bit off-topic, but old phones and tablets make great clocks for around the house! And as @haser_au suggests, great information panels.
- gambiting 10y agoI've got a 1998 Fujitsu laptop that is on 24/7, displaying a digital watch on an old 17" LCD monitor. It's so old it doesn't even have a fan, so it's completely silent(I've also replaced the hdd with a CF->IDE adapter with a 1GB CF card), and it runs Windows 95. I think it's a Pentium MMX 166Mhz + 64MB of ram. I guess nowadays a raspberry pi could do the same job with a slightly lower power consumption, but I've been using that laptop this way for years, so I feel bad about retiring it now.
- barbs 10y agoIs it networked? Just wondering about the possibility of time-drift
- gambiting 10y agoIt is actually! I've got an absolutely ancient PCMCIA wifi card that only supports 802.11b, but that's enough to connect to wifi and sync with NTP servers. Without it, the time drift is really bad, about 5-10 minutes/month.
- peatmoss 10y agoI'm always amazed how bad time drift is with non NTP synced systems. I have a couple very inexpensive Timex Quartz analog watches that manage a month without any drift that I notice (they get reset when I need to reset the date wheel).
- cheniel 10y agoVPN server. I've been using a Raspberry Pi for this purpose for a while now.
- MasterScrat 10y agoCheck out Pi Hole as well to block ads: https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/
- vacri 10y agoLaptops make great low-power 'servers' for soho needs, all in a slim form factor. Obviously won't do if you need grunt, but for light work they're great. They even come with their own Uninterruptible Power Supply and local console!
- LAMike 10y agoRun Tensorflow stuff on it
- Daneel_ 10y agoRun pfSense on it as your router, using VLANs to make use of the single NIC on it. I've done this myself, and it was a great learning tool. You get the benefit of having a built-in UPS too. Note that you'll need a switch capable of supporting VLANs too, but you can pick these up very cheaply nowadays.
- ekr 10y agoI'm using a 2009-era laptop as a server (ssh, http, irc-bouncer). Having tested the power consumption, (with the screen off), it sits at 6.5 W in idle, according to powertop, so it's very convenient. (I'm quite surprised by this figure, as I doubt modern Core M cpus can be much better than that). It's a P8400 cpu.
- sspiff 10y agoModern CPU's and systems can do much better than that. A colleague of mine has a Dell XPS 13, and with the screen off it sips ~3.4W being mostly idle (running Unity desktop doing nothing). I was surprised by this, since the last time I took the time to optimize my laptop's power consumption was in 2010, when 17W was a respectable result. It's not just the CPU, either. M.2 SSD's are quite a bit more power efficient than SATA, and when you're going to low single digit power usage, even those things start to stack up.
- ssijak 10y agoWill it blend?
- milankragujevic 10y agodonate it to me. im a poor high school student who is looking to get a mac computer to sart iOS development.
- 89vision 10y agohome-assistant.io is a pretty fun little hobby. I run it on the same core2 duo laptop I use as my media server. Old laptops work great as home servers.
- tony-allan 10y agoStarting to get into Raspberry Pi territory — low cost and low power consumption although you need to bring your own external disk.
- yuhong 10y agotechnical specs?
- lgleason 10y agoWe are always collecting them for a program that teaches kids to code in South Africa....anything 10 years old or newer works great for them.
- sixhobbits 10y agoI have an old laptop in SA. Could you link to details of the programme?
- known 10y agoDONATE to http://www.computerswithcauses.org/ http://www.computerswithcauses.org/
- grhmc 10y agoThis option is refreshingly direct, for this thread.
- bbcbasic 10y agoKeep it in a drawer. In 10 years time having hardware that you truly own that doesn't spy on you, and open backdoors will seem novel and may be worth a lot of money as a result!
- emsy 10y agoIf it's an Intel laptop with an Intel ME the op is already out of luck.
- akerro 10y agoIt will be even more useless in 10 years than it is now. Think that technology changes, there are new hardware standards, soon you won't be able to use pendrive without having webUSB driver installed.
- bbcbasic 10y agoThere will probably be no USB. All data in the cloud. Printer, Keyboard etc. will connect using Wifi or something.
- sc0rt 10y agoI've turned an HP 2000 laptop with an Intel CORE i3 and a smashed screen into a hub for some old scrypt miners, as well as just a general purpose terminal in my 'noc'. If I had another one I would probably use it to learn more about, and set up, a honeypot on my home network. Does it have a good GPU? Have it run password hashes for Aircrack-ng instead. Are you versed in Linux distros? If not, use it to play with unfamiliar OS (driver issues notwithstanding) without too much worry about breaking anything important. #tldnr use it to learn something new
- barbs 10y agoI have an old laptop (seems to be from the mid-00s) donated from a friend that I installed Arch Linux on and have constantly on and plugged into my network. It runs an ssh server and I can log into it anywhere remotely. It comes in handy for running scripts, downloading torrents/files when I'm out or I run cronjobs to do certain things at certain times.
- OneNoteIsFree 10y agoBesides giving it away- use it a backup, personal repository, remote server for times you don't want to carry a laptop with you...?
- keithpeter 10y agoThinkpad X60 manufactured December 2006. Runs any recent Linux well and could be used for daily tasks including Libreoffice and Web, so I support donation to one who needs basics. Can also run a customised ChromeOS install from http://www.neverware.com/ http://www.neverware.com/ which allows use as Web terminal and music player with local storage.
- emantos 10y agoIf it's one of those small ones (thinkpad x60 and x2xx generation), use it as a robot controller. Put it on top of an iRobot Create and experiment with robotics.
- nulltype 10y agoI use mine as a cat heater.
- kijin 10y agoCeiling cat called. He wants his Prescott back. He is threatening to switch to AMD's FX-9590 unless Intel comes up with a warmer processor a.s.a.p.
- 8draco8 10y agoFunny thing is that FX-9590 max temp is 61C. In comparision 61C is consider "normal" on i5-6500 with stock cooler under heavy load.
- bottled_poe 10y agoI doubt a laptop could raise the temperature of a cat to a safe cooking temperature.
- lazyjones 10y agoAn old laptop is probably best used as a terminal, provided it has decent keyboard and screen. I put my ThinkPad 720C (best laptop keyboard ever, but 4MB RAM) to good use as a Linux terminal using VNC back in 1999... It'd probably be still useful in that role today for what I typically do.
- ssijak 10y agoStop being overly paranoid.
- akerro 10y agoI just my old netbook as CI sever for all my projects, even the simplest.
- satysin 10y agoLook into recycling it to somebody who could use a computer. Maybe it is someone down on their luck or struggling to survive and can't find a way forward or an elderly person or just a kid who could do with their own computer. Slap Ubuntu on it and pay it forward. If you gift it to somebody looking to use it for more than Facebook then stick some free ebooks for Python or such on it. It is easy to think "but everyone has access to a computer" and while that is mostly true having your own computer is very different from access to one. My father is a teacher and has recycled three laptops (and a desktop a long time ago) to kids living on the poverty line. I know at least one was very grateful as I got a lovely thank you letter from them.
- lllorddino 10y agoWhy "slap Ubuntu on it?" Personally I use Fedora but don't see the reason why he should change the operating system...
- satysin 10y agoOf course the OS choice is up to you :) I could/should have said "slap Linux on it" but as I pretty much only use Ubuntu on my personal computers I write Ubuntu out of habit now. Fedora is a fine choice as well. Just don't stick Arch or Gentoo on it unless you also include your phone number for support ;)
- ja27 10y agoIt's a good use of them, but just realize that most people you donate a laptop to don't have internet access at home - other than on their phone. Don't count on them just downloading X and Y and load it up with everything you can ahead of time.
- sandworm101 10y agoI tried this once. All the local groups that took computers only wanted machines less than 5 years old, and even then only if they were capable of running the latest OS (ie win 8/10). Obviously my definition of "end of life" is different than most and I decided to continue using the machine. In fact, I am typing this on said machine. Continued use is better than recycling.
- toyg 10y agoI put an undemanding Linux on it and passed it to my 6-year-old daughter.
- jjuliano 10y agoCreate your own home VPN, useful on restrictive network environments like office, school.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aaronelkins 10y agoMake it as a free VPN/VPS for other to connect to...
- dhruvkar 10y agoI've just started doing this, but here's all I'd like to do. Setup a Twilio service number that hits your old laptop. Write scripts for things you want automated in and around the house. Two I'm working on - buy gifts for people based on their Amazon wish list & download movies based on rotten tomatoes ratings. When I'm finished, I should be able to text my PA number: "gift John" and a script runs on my old laptop that buys and sends a gift to John. Admittedly, this is a somewhat contrived use case, but I like automation and repurposing old hardware :D
- zhte415 10y agoAs many others say, give it away. Many don't have access to computers, and $100 or less is still a lot of money. Seriously can transform someone's life.
- Artlav 10y agoGive it to kids! (yours or someone else's) They'd love taking one apart.
- PeterStuer 10y agoThe machine was future e-waste since it was produced. That is a sunken environmental cost and shouldn't figure into the equation of whether it is useful to prolong its life. There is a running environmental impact related to power usage. This is the one that you need to offset with gained utility. But perhaps the most important decision: at this point you are in control of the end-of-life handling. You can opt for the most responsible process. Once you donate or sell the machine, you have no control, and the further down it goes the more chance it will end up in an illegal landfill, or in a Chinese toxic child-labour scavenging yard.
- jlarocco 10y agoI always have the same idea when I replace my old machines, but eventually I just recycle them or give them away. Usually the hardware I'm replacing it is so much faster that using the old machine as a compile farm or something like that doesn't make sense. Using it in a robot or something sounds fun, but I'm more likely to use a Rasberry Pi or Arduino for that. Could use it to play with distributed computing, but even that might be easier using a couple VMs on your new machine.
- randomsearch 10y agoDonation is probably the best way to use it. I had an old laptop I used to run Linux + Spotify on, so that I could take it to people's house parties and run music off it. No concerns about drink spillages or it being stolen, and you can let anyone add songs to the playlist. Warning: be selective over who you let near it! :-).
- clentaminator 10y agoBeowulf cluster
- deftnerd 10y agoIs there a recommended place where geeks in need can apply for donated laptops? I took a year off with my wife in kids in the cheapest US locale I could find (agricultural area of Puerto Rico) so I could survive on my passive income projects while I learn some new skills (C++, Go, deep learning, and a few others) I didn't expect to lose both laptops I brought - One to power surges caused by bad infrastructure and one to tiny sugar ants that decided to build a colony inside the laptop. I've ended my sabbatical and am heading back to the mainland, but it's hard to do dev work on the laptop I managed to breath life back into when I know that if it dies, I have no way to replace it. I'm sure I'm not the only poor geek out there. Where should we look for cast-off equipment that doesn't get mined by opportunists who just want free stuff to sell on ebay?
- knob 10y agoWhere are you at in Puerto Rico? I am in San Juan, and have a laptop I can give you. Would be happy to help a fellow-geek.
- deftnerd 10y agoOverlooking Adjuntas. We wanted to go somewhere with perfect weather and Adjuntas fits that bill :-)
- Vivtek 10y agoShout out! We're moving there in the next couple of years to grow coffee. We'll be in Ponce in August (that's where we know the most people, so we'll rent there for a year or two while learning the ropes from some coffee-grower friends and looking for the right land).
- deftnerd 10y agoYou're picking a great place to live. The people are friendly, fairly low crime rate, and the weather is amazing. I don't think it's been over 80 since I've been here. Everyone here grows coffee or bananas, so make sure you're not planning to sell locally. Water and Electric are inconsistent. Make sure wherever you live has a backup water tank that you keep filled and that your fancy electronics are on a good surge protector or better yet a UPS. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get an inexpensive generator. Internet is available too! alphanetwireless.com is a local WISP that serves the valley and surrounding mountains. I pay $60 for a 10 down/4 up connection if I remember correctly. Uptime is about 99%. Strong mobile phone signals in the area too across at least 3 different networks my visitors have had. Downsides? Not a lot of variety in restaurants. Most stuff is fried. Chinese food even comes with french fries. Also, berries are rare and expensive. My email is in my profile. Send me a message if you have any questions.
- Caparico 10y agoFormat and clean it entirely, then install the least resources consuming Linux OS you can find (something like PuppyLinux is great, even though CentOS was good for me, too). Now, you can use it as an extra screen. If it has an HDMI socket you're in luck. If no, just get a HDMI to VGA adapter and you're set.
- wallacoloo 10y agoCan you elaborate? You seem to be saying that the HDMI or VGA socket in a laptop can also act as an input instead of just an output? That intrigues me, though I'd also be really surprised if it were the case. You could potentially use one of those wireless display technologies (Miracast, I think it's called) and setup the computer as a sink, but the software seemed far from usable when I tried that a year ago.
- DanBC 10y agoReformat it and put an emulation-focussed distro on it. You could then practice your hardware modification skills and fit it into a different box.
- otempomores 10y agoUse it as embedded controller in a side project.
- niall777 10y agoRDP terminal, Asterisk pbx, web server, local/cloud file server, torrent uploads/downloads, tiny core system
- andrepd 10y agoOwncloud server or similar. Having control over your "cloud" is invaluable.
- sgt 10y agoAnother idea is to be able to run dashboards in the office from these laptops. We have a couple of laptops doing this in the office. We hid the laptops away somewhere so it doesn't look awkward, then route a VGA or HDMI cable to 27 inch screens that are mounted on the wall. We had a pretty complicated dashboard, one that the Raspberry Pi (at the time we set this up) struggled to display.
- 2suave 10y agoI repurposed my old laptop for my writing so I'd encourage you to do the same. Since I'm currently in the process of writing a book I thought it would be the most logical action to take. The laptop is running debian and the text editor of my choice (for the drafting) is Sublime Text.
- tim333 10y agoNot especially cool but I use my old one mostly for uploading video to youtube which can take many hours (slow broadband) while I'm using the new one in cafes.
- th3o6a1d 10y agoWow. These are all great responses. It's funny...I've installed Ubuntu, messed with Kodi and Plex, and run a personal website on it, but at the end of the day, I think I might just actually donate it.
- rreyes1979 10y agoXubuntu + MPD = Wireless Music Player For your home ;)
- Yenrabbit 10y agoAside from giving it away or using it as a cheap 'server' for ssh or whatever, there are a few other fun options. Mount it behind a picture frame or do what I did and pop it in a briefcase as a picture frame. https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/resize/600x600/6180151395319767958.jpg https://cdn.hackaday.io/images/resize/600x600/61801513953197... This is a fun project but you'll quickly get bored with it using up a plug socket :P Another option: I don't know your background or anything, but I see a lot of people with a dedicated laptop running a printer, laser cutter or whatever - saves tying up your primary machine during print jobs.
- rekado 10y agoMy main machine is actually a x200s. It's a perfectly fine machine for my daily needs, free software development, browsing the web, etc. If it is a machine like that I'd suggest to keep using it and treating it just like any other machine. You could even get rid of the hardware backdoor (ME+AMT) by replacing the BIOS with libreboot and use it as a slightly more secure machine for crypto. If it's considerably older than that it might still be sufficient for software development, so you could either sell it, or have a refurbisher sell it, or donate it to projects like a local CoderDojo group.
- crispytx 10y agoPuppy Linux!
- ajaimk 10y agoI recently turned a 6 year old 11" MBA into my coding laptop for coffeeshops on the weekend. Smaller screen helps me focus and it's good use. Took it to the apple store for a new battery but the sad part is how far technology has come.
- ebcase 10y agoRun ArchiveTeam Warrior -- http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warri... to help the Internet Archive create archival copies of websites and services that are being decommissioned. Also BOINC from UC Berkeley -- http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ -- to volunteer your processor cycles to scientific research. E.g. the current OpenZika project: https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/research/zika/overview.do https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/research/zika/overview.do
- RIMR 10y agoDo we really need 20+ comments calling for OP to give it to charity? It's noble, but it's pretty clear OP wants to start a project with it. Honestly, if you're a hacker, you're probably not going to want to part with working hardware you might use later. I own a ton of parts and old computers for this purpose. So, if you're looking to use your old laptop for something novel, I suggest: 1. Turn it into a TERM server. 2. Turn it into a media center with KODI(XMBC). 3. Turn it into a game server. 4. Put Windows Server onto it and build a home domain. 5. Install a different OS than your main laptop and use it interchangeably. 6. Use it for projects that may put your main laptop into danger (water, high voltage, etc.). 7. Plug a Kinect into it and turn it into a machine vision robot. 8. Add it to a BlenderGrid with all of your other computers and teach yourself 3D animation. 9. Install it into your car as a carputer / wardriving rig. 10. If it has a GPU, use it as a Steambox for low-end gaming. (See also: Media Center)
- anthk 10y agoLibertyBSD, learn to use bundled FVWM2 , install SPlayer - Seamonkey - Rox. Set up ~/.fvwm2rc. Copy it and hack it a lot. Enjoy an ultrafast machine. Run SMPlayer, search for the option "Skip loop filter", enable it for HD videos. Get Audacious, you'd need some background music to relax yourself. Learn to code in Scheme, and get some books on AI .
- lotusko 10y agojust keep it，after decades，it would be your memory
- thomashl 10y agohttp://www.relentlessplay.com/broken-laptop-cool-utility-monitor/ http://www.relentlessplay.com/broken-laptop-cool-utility-mon...
- thomashl 10y agohttp://www.relentlessplay.com/broken-laptop-cool-utility-monitor/ http://www.relentlessplay.com/broken-laptop-cool-utility-mon...