Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

I have an old Rock laptop (3.4ghz, 1gb ram, 60gb HD) which has died on me. I think the display is busted. However, I don't really want to bin it and was wondering if anyone has any interesting ideas for canabalising it and making something useful from it.

Idea's requiring the purchase of parts etc also welcome.

Phil

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

That's old?

(Sorry, this is not a helpful, or indeed serious, answer.)

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

if it's only the display that isn't working, how about hooking it up to the TV using a pc to tv converter and having access to your computer on your main tv for internet radio / video / youtube, etc. That's what I use an old laptop computer for.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

If its a Pentium 4 (Not a P4M) then junk it. When the P4M (Mobile) cost far more than a desktop P4 CPU many of the laptop manufacturers decided to use the desktop CPU in laptops. The piece of crap was such a power hog and heat pig that a battery charge usually never lasted mroe than an hour and the power supply was a brick. Eventually they would cook themselves because there was no adequate way to dissapate all the heat from that CPU.

So, like I said- If its P4- Junk it.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

You an make it into a headless server, or use it with an external monitor.

Just throwing it away seems like an awful waste. Isn't there any charity place that would take it?

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

Many companies will take stuff like this off your hands and find use for it or safe disposal. I think even Dell offers this now.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

You could mail it to me. and feel like you've done some good in this world hahaha.

*edit

Besides the broken display. Your "old" laptop puts my current one, and even my desktop to shame.

Boy, I really need to catch up on technology.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

1. FreeNAS Live CD and turn it into a NAS box with uPNP support for streaming Audio/Video to your N8x0.

2. If it has TV out or your TV has VGA inputs, install Myth and turn it into a Media Player.

3. ??????????????

4. Profit

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

Car computer. Run mpd and huge stash of music on it, playing through stereo, also streaming to tablet, and functioning as NAS for tablet (start a batch of transcoded movies transfering from car-computer to tablet when you start your drive, they're on by the end).
Don't know how good Linux BT support is in general (I know HFP isn't really working on tablets, but maybe better on desktop Linux), but if you could make it talk HFP to your cell-phone, and stream to/from your tablet by wi-fi... All sorts of options.
I've an old laptop, with good display, that I'm going to do such stuff with when I've time.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

I had a laptop with a busted screen and used it for three years running Ipcop firewall. You could run other types of servers on it. Having a battery in the laptop means you have backup power too.

Rich

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

My old work had a laptop with a smashed screen operating as the fax relay.

You could plug a monitor into it and use it as an actual machine since it's probably faster than my P43Ghz/1GB RAM desktop.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

When you say busted do mean cracked?

if not and it boots but just no video to the LCD, it's likely an easy repair of either the LCD backlight (not hard to replace at all) or the inverter died. It would not cost much to buy both parts. I would hook it up to an external monitor if you have one. If you get video you know the video card is good. I would then hunt up a supplier for your systems backlight (CCFL) and order TWO (in case you break one installing it...) they should be pretty inexpensive. And also find a new inverter board for that LCD on that laptop.

And heck make it a media server or something. I use an old PIII Dell Inspiron 5000 as a media server on my home network. It chokes on a some video's now and then but still works for the most part. I gave up cable/satellite about 5 years ago now and just watch everything online. I just send the video to the TV. It's not HD or anything of course but it works for me.

And I stream audio to my stereo too...works well.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

Park it next to a good stereo and stream your CD collection, located on some desktop over your network to it.

Use it as a compute server for SETI@Home or folding@home.

Park it above a ceiling tile, plug in a web cam and use it for home security, using your network to copy off site. One guy got a conviction by showing video of the thief stealing the computer!

Fax server / answering machine.

Re: Any ideas for use of old laptop?
 

Heck, use it for transcoding video.