Uses for an old laptop

troutfisher

troutfisher

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I have obtained an old but in good condition a Samsung Laptop with the following configuration
Pentium dual core 2.2 ghz processor
6gb Ram
300 GB HDD ( not SSD)
OS Win 10 home
Needless to say , its a bit pedestrian in the speed stakes.

I have no use for it but really its not worth selling as the postage would probably be as much as its worth.
My thoughts are stick Linux on it , although I have no idea of which version.
Does anyone have any other bright ideas ?
 

Choose the right edition — Linux Mint Installation Guide documentation

linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io

When I had a dabble with an old Inspiron laptop, the latest version of Mint was excruciatingly slow to start up - 7 minutes! So I reverted to an earlier version, which was pretty reasonable. The equation then becomes dependent on when a version ceases to be supported, so it's a balancing act over time.

Maybe it's time to recycle it & get on with life?
 
I recently tried to give my Satellite Pro away to the schools program during lockdown.
After I had told them what it was, they didn't want it, presumably because it was too low a spec to run the software needed.
When they say "donate your old laptop", they don't mean OLD....

Ubuntu (Linux) on it now. There's several flavours to choose from.
 
It could run security cameras and recording, here my similar spec old Toshiba with wonky keys is doing just that running continuously for over a year.
I did the same previously with a Samsung netbook originally on XP it ran continuously for *nine years* before starting to sound like a bluebottle was trapped inside but still kept working until I switched to the toshiba.
It will be more useful with Window on it IMO but completely re-install it will be faster than you'd think with all crap removed.
 
An SSD might help a lot.

I like the MATE desktop on Linux ('maté', like the tea). It's less resource hungry and more Windows-like than most. Ubuntu has a version, which is what I use:

Ubuntu MATE | For a retrospective future

A community developed, Ubuntu based operating system that beautifully integrates the MATE desktop. Ubuntu MATE is a stable, easy-to-use operating system with...
ubuntu-mate.org ubuntu-mate.org
Mint also has one, which will be faster on older hardware than the default Cinnamon desktop.
 
4wd said:
It could run security cameras and recording, here my similar spec old Toshiba with wonky keys is doing just that running continuously for over a year.
I did the same previously with a Samsung netbook originally on XP it ran continuously for *nine years* before starting to sound like a bluebottle was trapped inside but still kept working until I switched to the toshiba.
It will be more useful with Window on it IMO but completely re-install it will be faster than you'd think with all crap removed.
Click to expand...
Not sure it works as well as you think. I have an old laptop and playing a single 1080 stream on YouTube takes 30-40% of the CPU, 1440 just about works, 4K doesn’t. Multiple recording streams could be beyond the CPU he has.
 
Put a chin strap on it and use it as a hat?
Use it as a set of nutcrackers?
 
Put a handle on it and use it as a shovel.
 
If you really want to use it, spend 20 quid on a 128gb SSD as a boot drive. I'd recommend either Mint Linux Mate or Linux Lite xfce. Mate should come with everything you need including dvd playback etc. LL will require installation of multimedia codecs first, but is a lighter system. It would be fine for surfing, media consumption etc, but not serious use.

Avoid KDE (too much overhead) or Gnome (too weird) as desktop environments.
 
I have a similar but slightly more powerful (Slightly!) small laptop that I use for storing images, and occasional internet, when we are travelling.
After installing a SSD the difference in speed was NIL!
In older machines there are often too many bottlenecks to allow much improvement.
Just my experience!:)
 
troutfisher said:
I have obtained an old but in good condition a Samsung Laptop with the following configuration
Pentium dual core 2.2 ghz processor
6gb Ram
300 GB HDD ( not SSD)
OS Win 10 home
Needless to say , its a bit pedestrian in the speed stakes.

I have no use for it but really its not worth selling as the postage would probably be as much as its worth.
My thoughts are stick Linux on it , although I have no idea of which version.
Does anyone have any other bright ideas ?
Click to expand...
When you find a good use for it let us know - I have about 6 -8 mostly geriatric win and macos.

I have found occasional used as Serviio servers, other network stuff but it gets tedious after a time and I have a NAS that does everything.

We did try to donate them but no one was interested - cost more to rebuild than it was worth it and you have the problem of security - I haven’t had the heart to take a drill to the hdd’s yet.

MINT - is that the new favourite to Ubuntu flavour of linux these days? I have installed linux on a few machines but then what? Played around with GIMP and some freebee versions of matlab and mathcad and other engineering stuff but got bored.

Is it any use as a holiday laptop ? ( you remember holidays?) just for iplayer abroad, browsing and email. So long as it is light enough and well secured I guess you don’t have to worry about dropping it.

If you can get it to work quick enough you might be able to do some basic POST on it.
 
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There is a limit to what can be done however, you are still bottlenecks your the CPU if what you need relies on it.

I have an i3-4030u, this was a low end CPU when it was released in 2014 never mind now. I have it in a laptop upgraded with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. Internet browsing is superb, I keep 10’s of tabs open, MS Office is great unless I’m running very calculation intensive Excel files. Overall it is snappy.

Where it suffers is video encoding/ decoding, file compression, 4K videos, running CPU bound games, image processing.

For my general use it is perfect despite some limitations. Running Windows 10 Pro flawlessly. If you want to keep it I suggest SSD first then RAM upgrade. You won’t regret it (depending on your use case).
 
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Thanks for everyone's input, it is not worth me spending any money on it as I have no use for it and I already have a laptop which is far in advance of this one.
There is a guy in the next village who sorts them out and gives them to charity for use in the 3rd world , so I will take it there.
 
I'd make some form of table to sit over it (or little stand)
Then you could load images on the screen to create interesting backgrounds for macro photography.
You could also overlay tracing paper to give the background image a more diffused look.
 
I'm lucky that by having ham radio as a hobby, I can use most of my old computers for various dedicated purposes . But also I keep one as a bedroom kindle (my actual kindle is in my travel bag), and an old MacBook as a dedicated GarageBand jam-along device.
 
greyowl said:
When you find a good use for it let us know - I have about 6 -8 mostly geriatric win and macos.

I have found occasional used as Serviio servers, other network stuff but it gets tedious after a time and I have a NAS that does everything.

We did try to donate them but no one was interested - cost more to rebuild than it was worth it and you have the problem of security - I haven’t had the heart to take a drill to the hdd’s yet.

MINT - is that the new favourite to Ubuntu flavour of linux these days? I have installed linux on a few machines but then what? Played around with GIMP and some freebee versions of matlab and mathcad and other engineering stuff but got bored.

Is it any use as a holiday laptop ? ( you remember holidays?) just for iplayer abroad, browsing and email. So long as it is light enough and well secured I guess you don’t have to worry about dropping it.

If you can get it to work quick enough you might be able to do some basic POST on it.
Click to expand...

just curious which Mac OSX models you have?
 
My wife vounteers at the local foodbank. When lockdown started they appealed for unused laptops to distribute for children to use the online learning resources being provided.
Many were donated and refurbished by a volunteer ready for use. No one has ever bothered to get one. - Sad.
 
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