what to do with my old laptop

Did you get a new computer or new laptop but your old one still kind of works??? This is a very common situation now at days that getting a new laptop or pc is not as expensive as it used to be.

This hub is a story about what happened to me when I faced this situation that I think it is becoming more and more common and I present some of the solutions I found for this problem.

I mentioned it is a problem because a working but old pc or computer that is not in use it becomes a problem. First, space. It is true that the easiest thing to do it is to put it in the bin and that's it. But hey, the thing still works so you can not just forget about it so what you do? you just box it, packet and put it somewhere. The thing about computers is that they become obsolete quite quickly so the quicker you find them a use, the  better.

There are certain things you can do instead of your old computer or laptop in the bin. For example:

• You can give it away to the less fortunate. There are many options here. In many cases, public libraries have programs to reuse old computers. Some countries have programs to provide computers to schools in poor areas.
  
• You can put it to work in your house for less demanding tasks. For example, surf the internet with low processing demand pages (recipes, how to) or low processor tasks, printing station, word processor station. There are powerful and no high demand on processing operating systems, for example linux. The employment of an operating system in particular would depend on the characteristics of your old computer or laptop.
• You can find many tasks that could be aided by computers but that do not require a high processing or graphics capabilities.
  

If you choose to keep your old laptop or pc rather than give it away, you need to do these things so you can squeeze the best out of it:

• Check its characteristics: processor type, memory, hard drive capacity.
• Check that is in working order: if it can boot, if any of the devices is not working: cd rom, usb ports, monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc.
• Once you have its characteristics and checked that is working, then you can decide which operating system is best. Check the requirements of the operating systems. If you do not want to bother that much, the safest option is Linux (over any flavour of Windows or Mac OS). In the past, installing linux in a machine required some knowledge and skills. Now at days there are free distributions of linux that are quite user friendly. For example, Ubuntu.  You can download it for free and install it seamless in most of the equipments.
• Install only the necessary. Because of the natural limitations of an old equipment, you should install only what is required to run the desired software for the purpose of the machine. No place for additional or luxury here.