pctechguide.com

  • Home
  • Guides
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
  • Reviews
  • Glossary
  • Contact

Find a Use for Your Old Laptop

Technology grows by leaps and bounds. And, because of this, our devices get outdated rather quickly. They either get outdated because they are not supported any longer, or they get outdated because we want the newest gadget coming out and forget about the one we bought just recently. But, that does not mean these devices are no longer useful. In fact, some of the old laptops you have lying around may be quite useful if you reallocate their purpose. Before throwing out that old laptop, there is a possibility you can use it for something else more useful. In case you need to dispose of it because it does not work anymore, visit https://www.gigacycle.co.uk/ to learn how to do it in a ecologically safe way.

If you laptop has physical issues like a broke screen, or burnt up hard drive, then it may not have much use for us. But, if it is just slow and out of date then it may have some usefulness afterall. In fact, even if the screen is broken there is a chance the laptop can be connected to an external monitor, mouse and keyboard and be useful afterall if you don’t want to pay to have the screen fixed.

If you are inclined, you may want to see if that older laptop can be upgraded in anyway. You may be able to add some RAM or a bigger hard drive for very little money. Then to speed up the laptop, you can simply install a new operating system fresh. Before doing that you will want to backup all your files to an external drive in order to copy them back over to the new hard drive.

If you do not have an operating system disk like Windows 7 or 8, then there are free operating systems you can try out. The most popular are the various Linux flavors for you to download and install. In fact, these will probably run faster on an older laptop than Windows would anyway because they run more efficiently than Windows.

If you are already familiar with navigating in Windows, then you can try out Ubuntu Linux. It has a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables you to use a mouse to navigate around to different programs. Ubuntu is also good because it will include many of the drivers for popular hardware. Therefore, you will be surprised about how easy it will be to get up and running in short order.

If you absolutely do not want that old laptop, it is important not to just throw it away with the rest of the trash. There are components inside a laptop that are not good for the environment. Therefore, it is not a good idea to find its way into a dump where it can be exposed to the environment. Try to see if you can sell it on the secondary markets like eBay, Craigslist or Amazon. Someone else may find a use for it, or they may be able to use it for parts.

If you are not interested in selling it, there are companies that will pick up and dispose of old computers. Just make sure that you format the drive and completely wipe it. Or, make sure the computer disposal company does. Or, you can just pull the hard drive out before giving away the computer.

Another option may be to donate the computer to a charity. Be sure to get the proper tax documentation for the charity for your tax records. Again, be sure to wipe the drive before donating, however.

Think twice before deciding that old laptop is no use anymore. You may be surprised the use you can get out of it. And, if you can’t, maybe someone else can.

Filed Under: Articles

Latest Articles

Micro ATX motherboard form factor

Introduced in the late 1990s, the MicroATX is basically a smaller version of Intel's ATX specification, intended for compact, low-cost consumer systems with limited expansion potential. The maximum size of the board is 9.6in square, and its designed to fit into either a standard ATX … [Read More...]

AMD Thunderbird

In mid-2000 AMD introduced an enhanced version of the Athlon processor, codenamed Thunderbird. Fabricated using AMD's 0.18-micron process technology, the new core replaced the K75 chip's 512KB of off-die Level 2 cache by 256KB of cache … [Read More...]

Four Huge Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is becoming increasingly attractive for many businesses. Companies spent $132 billion on social media advertising in 2020. The amount companies spend on organic social media marketing is even higher. The business and commerce landscape has evolved rapidly during the past … [Read More...]

Revolutionize Your Internet Experience with Orbi 960 – The Ultimate WiFi System

In a world where seamless connectivity is essential, slow and unreliable internet connections are a major problem. Whether you are running a business, … [Read More...]

Do You Need a VPN When Trading Cryptocurrency?

There’s no doubt that the biggest global industries in 2023 are tech-driven, while there remains a significant crossover between many of these … [Read More...]

Goodbye Bitcoin: the 3 alternative cryptocurrencies that have great upside potential, according to experts

Bitcoin has been a very lucrative investment for people that got into it early. One report from The Motley Fool pointed out that $10 of bitcoin … [Read More...]

Self-driving cars face their Achilles’ heel and may be targets of hackers

The market for self-driving cars is booming. Customers spent $22.22 billion on these autonomous vehicles in 2021 and they will likely spend more in … [Read More...]

How to avoid scams with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies got a bad reputation when scams multiplied like ants on a piece of cake. Even today many people associate bitcoin and other … [Read More...]

WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING AND WHAT ARE ITS MAIN BENEFITS?

Users are Increasingly using cloud computing to store their information, which is replacing local storage. The business digitization process goes … [Read More...]

Guides

  • Computer Communications
  • Mobile Computing
  • PC Components
  • PC Data Storage
  • PC Input-Output
  • PC Multimedia
  • Processors (CPUs)

Recent Posts

BTX – Balanced Technology eXtended – Motherboard Form Factor

Intel has been promoting its Balanced Technology Extended specification for a while before the company began, in late 2004, to push in earnest to … [Read More...]

Running Scrum retrospective meetings without Scrum Master

There are as many ways of conducting retrospective meetings as there are work teams. Today, we will try to describe a good formula to make the … [Read More...]

Files and Settings Transfer – How to do a clean installation of Windows XP

Now's the time to transfer the files and settings preserved from your previous version of Windows to the new Windows XP environment. Do this by … [Read More...]

[footer_backtotop]

Copyright © 2023 About | Privacy | Contact Information | Wrtie For Us | Disclaimer | Copyright License | Authors