What to do with old laptops?

[McFly]

I have a laptop from 1995 2005, it's a Dell Inspiron 9300 (fully loaded at the time) with a 17" screen. I've seen it for sale on ebay for $100. Besides selling it... what other alternatives do I have? (besides giving it away to somebody on the forum for free) Is there a place I can donate it? A place that will buy it?

 

The battery is toast, the power cable is fine, and it works great. Right now I'm using it as a DVD player by connecting it to my LCD TV through the SVideo cable.

Edited January 18, 2011 by McFly

[gogo dog]

Maybe donate it to Camillian Social Centre Rayong, don't know if they would have a use for such a beast?

[Mike Asia]

try using it as a paper weight.

[LaaMok]

I have a laptop from 1995, it's a Dell Inspiron 9300 (fully loaded at the time) with a 17" screen. I've seen it for sale on ebay for $100. Besides selling it... what other alternatives do I have? (besides giving it away to somebody on the forum for free) Is there a place I can donate it? A place that will buy it?

 

The battery is toast, the power cable is fine, and it works great. Right now I'm using it as a DVD player by connecting it to my LCD TV through the SVideo cable.

 

1. give it to local school 2. give it to gf's family 3. dress up as a blind guy, sit in a shopping center, put laptop next to you and i will film people as they attempt to steal it from you

 

 

Maybe donate it to Camillian Social Centre Rayong, don't know if they would have a use for such a beast?

 

Thats a good idea, they have a computer day center down there.

[Mike Asia]

does it have windows 95 or windows 3.11 ?

[McFly]

Thanks for the input and ideas Gogo Dog and LaaMok.

[LaaMok]

does it have windows 95 or windows 3.11 ?

 

why, are you thinking of upgrading your laptop

[asshole]

I have a laptop from 1995, it's a Dell Inspiron 9300 (fully loaded at the time) with a 17" screen. I've seen it for sale on ebay for $100. Besides selling it... what other alternatives do I have? (besides giving it away to somebody on the forum for free) Is there a place I can donate it? A place that will buy it?

 

The battery is toast, the power cable is fine, and it works great. Right now I'm using it as a DVD player by connecting it to my LCD TV through the SVideo cable.

 

I have some luck 'recycling' older model lap tops by loading on an easy to use linux OS (Ubuntu usually, Mint sometimes), and donating to a worthy cause (read cute girl). Linux is a lot easier on resources (CPU, RAM), so the they work pretty well. The biggest problem is lack of hard disk space.

 

For email, word processing, facebook, browsing, music, even some basic photo editing, this works great. If you want to do video work, or anything really CPU or RAM intensive (CAD/CAM, newer video games) it is not as useful.

[McFly]

LOL! I meant to say 2005, not 1995. Good idea about the Linux, but Windows XP runs fine on it so that's not a big deal.

 

It has a 1.7GHz processor, 2GB ram, 60GB HD, DVR-RW, wifi, 256​MB Nvidia video card, 17" widescreen.

Edited January 18, 2011 by McFly

[asshole]

LOL! I meant to say 2005, not 1995. Good idea about the Linux, but Windows XP runs fine on it so that's not a big deal.

 

It has a 1.7GHz processor, 2GB ram, 60GB HD, DVR-RW, wifi, 256​MB Nvidia video card, 17" widescreen.

 

 

Some of us just don't like MS!

[ZGreyFox]

You could use it as a dedicated media server to your TV. Download and/or store movies on your laptop and then output the video to a TV with VUZE and an XBOX.

[jamilv]

Put it on a classified site for free and specify what type of person you would like to give it to?

Like a struggling family, student, etc, etc

I do that with all the old PCs and laptops I collect from clients

I noticed some of the places that take old PCs around where I live, even though they say they give them to people who need them they actually sell them off for like $90-100 a piece and make quite a bit considering they got the PCs for free.

Edited February 26, 2011 by jamilv

[Woofiee]

Same boat here - just backed-up my old 1.67Mhz PowerPC laptop - the old household Mac, left around for visitors to use - but I've got plans to replace it with a new v2 iPad next week so it'll go off to Goodwill once I do a multi-pass zeroing of the drive.

 

Always zero-out the drive! That's erasing the disk and randomly writing zeros and ones to scramble any data hiding there. Do it several times. The worse thing you can do is give something away with all the right reasons and then get bitten because some unscrupulous person farther down the line took advantage of this slip-up...

Edited February 26, 2011 by Woofiee

[neil123]

Same boat here - just backed-up my old 1.67Mhz PowerPC laptop - the old household Mac, left around for visitors to use - but I've got plans to replace it with a new v2 iPad next week so it'll go off to Goodwill once I do a multi-pass zeroing of the drive.

 

Always zero-out the drive! That's erasing the disk and randomly writing zeros and ones to scramble any data hiding there. Do it several times. The worse thing you can do is give something away with all the right reasons and then get bitten because some unscrupulous person farther down the line took advantage of this slip-up...

 

Just to ley you know there is a german guy that recycles old computers in Pattaya him and his wife run a bar in pattaya and they recycle and refurbish computers and give them to schools and families while training teachers to use them to show the kids, it as something to do with Pattaya golf club will try and find and post links

[andyaus]

some good ideas already but I would take it to my favourite bar and let the girls have it with a translation program. The girls love it and they just might be able to communicate with us in the future

[neil123]

The guys name is Glen Holtaus used to own the Jeep bar in Pattaya been there 30 years link is http://jeep.htmlplanet.com/

[s0315]

I gave it to my graandma !

[Newguy1967]

Unless you have an immediate family member it sounds like you can pick and choose the charities/school to donate to.

 

IMPORTANTLY make sure your previous DATA has been "nuked" from that HDD. I don't mean deleted, I also don't mean wiped with some crappy tool.

 

CCleaner can do it, Duke's Nukem is arguably the best.

 

Don't give them a "hot potato"!

 

Just cause I'm paranoid doesn't mean their not out to get me. Let's take that to the REALISTIC level purely by coming to this site, creating a file you HAVE been flagged, that's reality. It's how you manage it from there. This occurs at the vast majority of sites we visit today.

 

Okay this for another thread on "How to maintain Internet Security today".

[culvers]

use it as a pornstation - all my porn viewing is done on my old laptop to keep my new pc clean...

[Freeze]

I've got a porn station for ya xnxx.com

 

use it as a pornstation - all my porn viewing is done on my old laptop to keep my new pc clean...