New uses for your Old Computer
As the holiday season is over, most of us might have upgraded our PCs. (I changed to a new one with AMD Athlon X2 4000+ with 250GB Hard drive and 2 GB RAM). So it is a obvious question that what do I do with this old PC? Even if you gonna sell them it will not fetch anything. Still there are many ways you can go away with the old PC and I will explore a number of ways to make use of your old PC.
Digital Juke box:
Considering the old PC has a sound card (which most of the 7-8 year old PC will be having), you can plug-in a speaker and install a music player like Winamp, iTunes or the built-in Windows Media Player you can get a dediacted music player at your home. So no need to go for another Home theatre or Stereo system. If the PC is considerably a new model then you can even hook digital speaker and exploit the full functionality of digital music.
Home Networking:
One and one always makes two. So keeping the old PC and connecting it to the new PC through a CAT 5 cable you can have your home network set up. You can even go for a wireless LAN by getting a wireless router. If the older PC does not have an Ethernet card then you may get one for as low as 25 bucks. With this you can try your hand on a LAN. If you have a LAN you can share a single Internet connection between the PCs, share files and folders and other peripherrals like printers and scanners. Not a bad idea to try it out.
Multiplayer Gaming:
This use is infact applicable for those whose soon to be discarded PC is not so old, otherwise it will not support many of the 3D, network games due to hardware limitation. So if you are into serious gaming you can enjoy gaming over your LAN and start playing multiplayer tournaments at home, without going to a game parlour. Your children will be utmost happy with such a set up. Atleast you can have some relaxing moments with your children at home.
Uses for Children:
If you have children at home and you want them to have fun with computers but do not wish to shed that extra buck then your old PC will come handy. You can load many educational stuffs for children ( many freeware applications are available). Doing this you will be fear free of your kids messing with your own files and folders.
If you still do not see any of the above tips as useful, you can consider selling the PC but do not expect to get a ton of money. And you must be aware of the fact that electronics gadgets has the least resell value. You may even consider selling individual part rather then selling the whole unit at once. This may yield more money then selling the box at once.
If you are philanthropic in nature, you may consider donating it to a not profit organization, school, hospital or a church. Many of the under priviledge people will be benefitted through your kind action.
Among all the uses described above I find the Networking use the best as it will give you many other benefits like Internet connection sharing, practicing for your studies and GAMING.
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Comment by meg on 13 January 2008:
My husband made a digital juke box out of ours and added some gadgets here and there. These add-ons cost him quite a some but I can see he is happy about it. :-]
Comment by meg on 13 January 2008:
I’m sorry. My mind and hands were not in tandem. I meant sum, not some.
apologies, apologies….
Comment by Ajay M on 14 January 2008:
It is Okay Meg. Mistakes are integral part of human.
Comment by USC Trojan Fan on 14 January 2008:
All very good ideas. Here’s a few more – my old computer at work, I installed a punch clock program on it, and put it in the lobby so employees can use it to punch in/out; actual punch clock machines are pretty expensive. Another old computer, I installed an alarm program on it, used some old speakers, and turned it into an expensive alarm clock
Comment by Gene on 14 January 2008:
I gave my old computer which was between three and four years old to my daughter and her three boys. They love the extra system and are having a lot of fun and utility from the old obsolete box.
Had I sold it I might have received fifty dollars for it. The fact that it is being used by people I love is special to me.
A Traveler On The Journey!
Gene
Comment by Ajay M on 14 January 2008:
@ USC Trojan
Nice idea man.
@ Gene
Happiness is nuthing more than making others happy by woteve small help we can give others.
Comment by Mr. Apartments on 14 January 2008:
My friend turned his monitor into a fish tank and left it on his desk. So now when he works in his office he can be with his fish as well.
Comment by Vincent's Tip's & Trick's on 15 January 2008:
After going through a virus attack, losing a hard drive, fighting off hackers, upgrading all my software, installing fire-walls, being threatened with being cut-off by my email provider,
and a host of other problems…
I have fixed my computer…
and NOW it works exactly the way I want it to!
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/6828/newcomputernw3.jpg
Comment by Ajay M on 15 January 2008:
Cool use Vincent
Comment by credit report on 15 January 2008:
I installed an alarm program on it, used some old speakers, and turned it into an expensive alarm clock
Comment by Andrew Reynolds on 16 January 2008:
Great idea for old computers! I gave my old computer to my niece. And she really love working with it, watching some videos and playing games.
Comment by Toronto News on 16 January 2008:
As for my old computer, i donate em to the locale charity,
but usually i would strip it apart and sell the parts for a profit so my new computer is compensated..
cheers!
Comment by Daniel on 17 January 2008:
hi there.that was quite informative.i actually use my older pc as a music terminal and to watch movies.coz its audio/video hardware is still good, so why pressurise the new PC. keep it up.
Comment by tunes on 17 January 2008:
This is a nice idea.But it have to work.
Comment by health information and services on 17 January 2008:
Many people sell or dump their old computers.I thik this will help them.
Comment by Dog Tricks on 17 January 2008:
I am using my monitor as TV using TV card
Comment by Andrew on 18 January 2008:
Im all for recycling and making useful things out of old items.
Actually a cool story. A friend of myn has the latest apple. Well its old. But its the latest version for which you can programme the power of your hard drive. He keeps recycling it for newer parts and his 7 year old computer is powerful then my 3 month old multimedia power computer.
Regards Andrew
Comment by Er be treasure on 18 January 2008:
I’ve never really had problems off loading my old computers. I find if you have a fialry up to date one, someone on ebay will buy it off you, exspecaily if it’s a desktop. Loads of small business bye cheap ones off email, recondition it a bit and sell them on. Laptop are harder, but they make great door stops.
Comment by Toronto Weather on 19 January 2008:
I’d definitely use it for home networking or a file storage server
Comment by virtuozzo on 20 January 2008:
All great ideas, particularly the home networking one. How did you get these ideas, man? You got a great mind! Overall, very impressive.
Comment by stained glass panels on 23 January 2008:
I contacted the local school and they hooked me up with a family that would like a computer for their young child, but could not afford one.
Comment by John City on 26 January 2008:
I use my old computer to browse the web. And use my new computer just to run programs and play games. The reason why I do this, is to keep viruses and spyware off of my new computer. So if my old computer gets a virus, I can just reload it, because all I use it for is browsing the web.
Comment by Music Site on 27 January 2008:
I agree that selling an old pc would not get you anything worth it, I think the ideas you have post are really good ones, I just would advice you about being careful when letting your kids using them as the internet sometimes can be really critical on kids, and you should watch them when they use it to make sure they are safe,
Good luck.
Comment by Casitecenter on 28 January 2008:
this remind me when i was kid oh god those old days DOS command
Comment by Bingo Online on 31 January 2008:
you can actually dump your old pc at the office
for the typist to use
i just open my own office and that’s what i did :p
Comment by Todd on 26 February 2008:
I find that there are many great uses for old computers. Such as, filling in all of the air holes on the sides and filling it with water and fish and make a new aquarium.
I have always had someone close to me that can always use a computer, even if it’s an older model and ‘out of date’ according to the manufacturer. Many of these older models still last a lot of people quite a bit longer and they might as well be getting the use out of them as well.
You can always donate the parts to a computer store that rebuilds computers with spare parts. It’s kinda like ‘organ donation’, except with computer parts… let another computer come back to life, in the event of the death of your computer…
Todd
Comment by moregadget on 4 March 2008:
very good idea, why I never thinking about it before… bright idea, thank you for share
Comment by Jack on 22 March 2008:
I made my first server from a redundant computer, it still works fine and is a cheap alternative to buying a new one.
Comment by Astrid Lee on 19 May 2008:
Yes, this is EXACTLY what we did with our old computer.
We researched highly educational websites and created shortcuts on the desktop, and our little one just received the BEST present ever.
She’s an appreciative child, but this computer to her is ‘verrryyyyy special’. And we’re happy too as most likely she’ll be able to read in a few months!
Other ideas are great also. Love that jukebox… lol…
Comment by NJ_COmputer_Service on 12 November 2008:
Yeah I’d say computer 2001 and newer are still extremely capable and with a low cost ram upgrade they play music and videos or just serve as a office productivity computer
Comment by Bianca on 27 January 2009:
At home, my husband and his brothers used their old computers to set up a network. Every weekend, his brothers would come over to our home and they would play LAN games. They even call it their “LAN Party”.