Rehabilitating Damaged Laptops 346
Rollie Hawk writes "It breaks my heart to see a computer in need of a good home. For years, I've driven my wife crazy with all the 'strays' I've brought home with me. After all, the last thing my house needs is a few more cubic feet devoted to kenneling old and abused computers. That being said, laptops present very unique opportunities. No matter what caused you or someone else to ditch that old laptop, there still may be some way to integrate it back into society. For every kind of laptop lemon, I've found that there's plenty of lemonade to be made."
Not terrifically exciting, but an easy read (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, the suggestions as to what to run in which situation are helpful, but I like to think that if I were dealing with those problems, I'd be able to figure those solutions out as well.
Oh well, it killed a few minutes.
Give them to kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
I got my interest in computer engineering from taking apart people's old junk. TVs, VCRs, computers, just about anything electro-mechanical.
If anything, i bet you can find a kid who would like to smash it up, but if you ask around, I am sure you can find a kid who would be interested in disecting it.
You never know, you could set some eager young mind on the path to a science or engineering career. And we can ALWAYS use more of us, especially as today's children drift farther and farther from science or engineering.
How interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, though, I'm curious where you're getting yours...neighbors and coworkers? Or is there some online stash somewhere that nobody told me about?
Re:Hey! How about a server? (Score:2, Insightful)
High availability? Nup
Router? Probably not, unless you're going to use a combo of PCMCIA / USB eth adapters.
Database server? Nup.
File server? Check out prices of 120G laptop drives vs. 120G desktop drives. Nup.
Laptops are laptops, there were never intended to be servers, and run really poorly when tried to be used as such (in my experience, anyway).
Unless you just want a "server", and that's it. Sure it won't do anything, but you'll have a server!!
Re:Give them to kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm much better at putting stuff back together these days (which is a good thing), and I still love taking stuff apart. I have a broken hard disk on my desk which is the next candidate...
Re:Good idea ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the crap heap thanks you for your quick turnover of modern technology. I haven't paid for any of my laptops.
Read the article...kind of scary (Score:5, Insightful)
I do agree that setting up a late model laptop with a cracked display as a server of some sort does make a lot of sense, asssuming of course you have need for such a server. But installing Win3.1 and wordperfect 6.0 on a 386 that's old enough for a bar mitzva is just plain crazy for anyone who has any means of getting anything better. Toss it!
Human beings are aquisitive. We like to get stuff and keep stuff. Some people don't seem to understand that there comes a point at which holding on to something is a detriment because it eats up resources without providing any genuine return. The resources I'm talking about are things like space, electricity, and the patience of your spouse. It is far, far better to periodically do an inventory and toss out stuff. If you don't have a legitimate use for it and aren't going to have a use for it, then get rid of it. If you can't stand the idea of throwing it into the landfill then take it down to goodwill. Just because its useless to you doesn't mean its useless to everyone. Not only will you have more space for new stuff, but you'll find that your state of mind will improve. Lets face it, having a yard, or a house, or even a room filled up with junk creates a problem. The junk takes up space, gets in the way, and is generally a pain, and yet you don't want to get rid of it for some reason. This creates stress. Get rid of the junk and get rid of the stress.
I used to collect computers. Not anymore. I ditch anything I can't put to good use. The only exception I've made is for my old Apple IIe that I've had since I was 12, and if it ever dies I'm ditching it too. Today I've got 2 PC's and an Ultra-10. Actually make that 3 PC's if you count my HTPC that's in the living room. I'm a lot happier now than I was back in my hoarding and pack-ratting days.
I think the author of this piece needs to throw some crap out. If his wife hasn't left him by now then someone need to tell the vatican because she needs to be cannonized as a saint.
Lee
Why reuse it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Need a MP3 player? run it on your main PC.
Need a word processor? run it on your main PC.
Need a server? run it on your main PC with VMWare or user-mode linux or whatsoever equivalent.
Don't need any of them? forget about it and throw the old laptop away, or maybe give it to some of your friends who wants it as some other usage.
That would be cheaper, considering that old laptops eat up your room space, and here in Seoul, every square feet of your apartment cost thousands of dollars.
Not to mention getting your room full of ancient machines, and the disk+fan noise you have to tolerate every day.
Re:Read the article...kind of scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Marriage, sir, is an art of compromise. I have patience for my spouse - I am a "good boy" when we meet our in-laws, I go to see "chick-flicks" (tonight we're goint to see "The Notebook", oh boy, I'm already scared), I am kind to her friends, even the ones that I actually hate. My spouse has patience to me and agreably she needs a lot. But everyone in a marriage NEEDS some space on his own - you can't jettison all your hobbies or passions just because your spouse doesn't like/understand them.
You are right poiting that this guy's hobby is economically unfeasible. It's almost always better and cheaper to buy a new laptop rather than refurbish a 10-year old el crappo. But what wrong with having a HOBBY? Hobbies usually consume resources ("The resources I'm talking about are things like space, electricity, and the patience of your spouse") and I don't think that this one is particularly worse in that matter when compared to, say, golfing or slashdotting.
Re:Thin Clients (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't forsee this machine losing functionality so long as it can run a reasonably modern browser.
Re:FTFA and Linux Alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're assuming that:
A laptop with a 100MB hard drive came with a cdrom
The motherboard supprts booting from cdroms
A laptop with a 100MB hard drive has enough memory to run a modern linux distro.
Beyond all that, laptop hard drives are not designed to run 24/7...Chances are it'll tank in pretty short order.
-Chris
Before you Frankentop, see the cost of new (Score:3, Insightful)
144-pin sodimms [crucial.com] $113.99/256 (costs may be higher for EDO or propriority memory)
16bit PC card ethernet adapter $30 [newegg.com]
WIFI to Ethernet Bridge $93 (in case you can't do cardbus) [newegg.com]
Laptop DVD rom drive $50 on ebay.
Cost to make that laptop modern $386.99
Knowing you can from Walmart [walmart.com] for $598 + tax with all that crap already, priceless.
Sure you can frankentop, just so long as you don't cross the bottom line.
Re:Hey! How about a server? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would work great for lan parties, you could just plug it in and leave it silently running in a corner while all your friends frag away.
Re:Give them to kids... (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when I noticed it starting to change. There was an ad on the radio, and it used a modem negotiation tone as part of the suggestion that the product being hawked was high-tech. I'd never heard that noise outside of my own explorations, and I was well aware that the general public was ignorant of it.
Within a year, the word "e-mail" started appearing in newspapers, and all hell broke loose. Computers in movies were more than word processors. Pretty soon there were even movies about hackers, not homemade stuff but real hollywood flicks. The romanticism reserved for spies in decades past has shifted to technologists.
I think that kids growing up now, who we'd identify as fledgling geeks, won't experience the same ostracization we did. Some of the attraction of technology is probably due to Asperger's syndrome in a lot of us, so the social ineptitude is here to stay. Still, these kids will find more acceptance of their talents, and understanding of their interests, than we did.
Jump-starting a youngster's interest in technology, or furthering their comfort with exploring the inner workings of a machine, is nothing to be ashamed of.
(Score: 4, Off-Topic)
Here's one that 's actually worth the bother: (Score:5, Insightful)
Get copies of:
1. all the hardware manuals for all your more modern systems. Particularly, get your mainboard manual, schematics for jumpering and cabling your hard drives and CD/DVD drives, and info on your network, video and sound cards.
2. lists of your bios beep codes, and other startup info if needed.
3. selected software documentation. (mostly for essential parts, such as the OS).
4. If you have any windows boxen, copies of system configuration info, particularly how Windows has assigned IRQs and DMAs, particularly on older systems, and a known good backup or two of the registry.
5. a list of URLs for your hardware and software manufacturers (optional - only really useful if you can get to the internet by some other means without having to lug this laptop to the public library or something just to connect)
These files, with an older OS, will typically come to a few hundred Mb or less. Set up the laptop with the aprropriate software to read them all (you'll probably just need a general text reader and maybe Adobe Acrobat reader for PDFs, not usually much else). Voila! Now when you lose LAN or internet connectivity, or the machine won't even boot right, you have a portable tech support library.