Your old computer, born again

[Lite]

They're collecting dust in storage rooms and taking up extra space in your garage or office. They can't handle today's applications, peripherals or operating systems. Yes, older computers are a nuisance, like the brother-in-law who sleeps on your sofa for a few months.

But tossing tech gear into the garbage is not exactly environmentally correct. Better ideas: Recycle older computers or retrofit them to serve a new purpose.

Luckily, older PCs and their kin are more than capable of handling a bunch of new uses; you can turn them into anything from gaming rigs to media stations where everyone in your family can rip CDs and fill up their MP3 players.

Here are my top 10 choices for what to do with a PC that's past its peak as a primary computing device but still has plenty of life in it for other uses. I've tried all of these, and I let you know how well these projects have worked for me.

1. Use an old laptop as a guitar amp

One excellent use for an old computer is to re-imagine it as a guitar amp. You'll need an audio interface to connect a guitar to the computer, and you'll need used computer speakers. For my amp, I used a seven-year-old Apple iBook G3 that was loaded with OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

2. Use an old notebook as an e-mail terminal

With some older laptops, the trick is where you set up the system and not necessarily whether it's fast enough for every computing activity. For example, I used a five-year-old Toshiba Satellite 4600 to set up Yahoo Mail in full-screen mode (in Internet Explorer, just press F11). I then placed the computer in a hallway where any member of my family or a visiting friend can jump on it to check for messages.

3. Use your old PC + iTunes as a home media server

An old computer likely has a slow processor and not much RAM, but a setup like that is actually 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 -- if your system supports SATA and has fast hard drives, you can expect fairly good performance even if the processor is a bit outdated.

You'll need 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 enough RAM to run the media server. Usually you can get by with 2GB or so to run 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 access to your files.

4. 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.

I used an older PC that used to be a home server and still runs the Windows Home Server operating system, and added 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 work with some of the very latest games (such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2) but it does support the vast majority of newer games.

5. Turn an old system into a Folding@Home system

Here's an upgrade for any older netbook or notebook that's not only easy, but gives you an opportunity to help a worthy cause.

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.

6. Use any netbook for home security

Netbooks are too slow to handle gaming and movies, but they work 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. I used 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.

7. Install Jolicloud to liven up an old netbook

Netbooks such as the original Acer Aspire One and the Dell Mini don't use the latest iteration of the Intel Atom processor (called Pineview) and come with 1GB of RAM or less. (Companies such as Lenovo now offer 2GB and 3GB versions of their netbooks.) Older netbooks usually run Windows XP, which some see as outdated.

One easy way to make your netbook run faster is to use a new operating system called Jolicloud.

8. Use an older desktop for Netflix movie night

If you have fast broadband in your home, you can use an old PC to stream movies even if the processor is outdated or the system is clunky or is filled with too much software. If your old system is loaded with software and drivers, it might run more slowly. Windows might not have enough space for virtual memory, among other things, but in my tests that didn't really change the movie playback quality.

For this upgrade, I used my old home-built computer from about 2007. It has an AMD Athlon 64 processor and just 2GB of RAM, but it happens to be housed in a red and black case that matches the colors of the Netflix service.

9. Try home automation using Hawking Tech gear

Home automation is another computing activity that does not need a powerful desktop or notebook computer. For the most part, you would be using a computer as a video surveillance system but you'd also be using it to automate other functions, such as turning lights on and off.

I used the Hawking Technologies HomeRemote Pro system with an older home-built desktop system running an AMD Athlon 64 processor with 3GB of RAM. The Hawking kit comes with a router that was easy to set up, a security camera that connects to the router over a wireless network and optional modules you can use for controlling lights and home appliances.

10. Run a dedicated gaming server on any old desktop

Gaming servers -- which run in your home for local multiplayer matches or run on the Internet for anyone to use -- do not require a superfast gaming system. In fact, you don't even need a good graphics card or a lot of RAM, although, as more people connect, it does help if the processor is fast enough to keep up with demand.

The best way to find out if your older system will work as a dedicated gaming server is to check with the game developer (if the server is a commercial product) or ask that question on the forums for the dedicated server software (if the game is a noncommercial product).

Source

[ck_kent]

Old computers??? I was thinking like Pentium II / III old computers. I have a PIII computer with 64MB RAM and turned it into a linux router. :)

[LeetPirate]

My main problem is all the components of my older computers live forever but the motherboard dies off mostly due to capacitor degradation. By the time that happens you can't even get an old board to buy to replace it. That's what happened to my older Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 machines.