What is Digg?68 Comments
- trenchfever, on 02/23/2008, -2/+57Donate to the less privileged.
- yoshitomi, on 02/23/2008, -2/+39I had this great idea of converting my old laptop into a digital picture frame. So, one day I set out to build it, but I stopped because I realised that I don't have a camera. Or any friends. Or any sort of life in general, really.
- caLt, on 02/23/2008, -1/+23What he actually means is; "I can afford a high-end PC, and unlike you guys, I have a girlfriend!"
- virtualsnyper, on 02/23/2008, -0/+20This was awesome. Media servers, photo frames, wifi extenders, salvaging a laptop monitor to use as a normal monitor. Now I have so many uses for those old laptops in storage. (not to mention quite a few projects)
- MikeSD34, on 02/23/2008, -0/+20What he actually means is: "Why should my parents spend more on a computer I can take with me if I never leave my mothers basement?"
- frakingcylons, on 02/23/2008, -2/+18my old laptop runs my utorrent clinet w/ web ui, so I can add torrents while away from home... also, I have MediaPortal, the open source alternative to microsoft's evil media center...
- caLt, on 02/23/2008, -0/+14Get a room!
- elementop, on 02/23/2008, -0/+14Not always.
When I was 24, I ran into some really serious health problems that forced me to quit my job. I spent a year on public assistance because I couldn't work. After surgery a year later, I was able to go back to work and now I make over 70K. Am I less hard working?
Didn't think so. - carpespasm, on 02/23/2008, -3/+15buried as irrelevant.
- thetayloreffect, on 02/23/2008, -1/+10I agree with frakingcylons
I'm a Microsoft guy by trade - but I love Linuxing up legacy hardware and laptops just for kicks.
I LOVE rTorrent. I run it on an old Sony Notebook (Pentium III, 256mb of ram, 20gb drive)
I installed the server edition of Ubuntu with Open SSH, Samba, FTP and rTorrent. rTorrent is totally console based so I just putty into it, map to the drive over my home network (or FTP into it from work) drop a torrents into the "watch" directory then let it grind away. It's seems so much faster then the Java based applications I've used on my Windows machine and since its running on a remote computer it doesn't bog down my primary machine. It has virtually no overhead, and since its a laptop it uses almost no electricity and takes up very little space on a bookshelf.
Windows and Linux machines can live together on a network in perfect harmony... theres no need to pick sides :) - FeartheKnighted, on 02/23/2008, -1/+10I'll be your friend.
- roflbrothel, on 02/23/2008, -0/+7Dugg for having a good idea.
- depro9, on 02/23/2008, -1/+7I go to the salvation army weekly to rescue old PCs & slap xubuntu on it then give them to kids living in Chicagos ghettos. I fill them with a lot of edutainment programs & anything that might help them with school work. They then teach their parents how to use a computer in time.
- SOS84, on 02/23/2008, -0/+6This article is great. I recently recycled an old ThinkPad T41p whose VGA failed. I yanked the processor and along with a few other parts I had laying around (RAM, HDD, X300 VGA) and purchased (case, PSU, TV tuner card and Mobo), turned it into an HTPC. As stated in the article, I turned the laptops HDD into a custom external, installed its RAM into another laptop and sold the battery and combo drive to another ThinkPad owner through Craig's List and sold the LCD on ebay. I used these funds to pay for the external case for the portable HDD and the parts I needed for the HTPC. The only thing I had to dispose of was the laptop case and MoBo.
- Matteos, on 02/23/2008, -1/+5In addition he means, I pretend my inflatable girlfriend is real and has a job and a laptop.
- andycr512, on 02/24/2008, -0/+4Lunch tray, if you can carry it.
- subgeniusd, on 02/23/2008, -1/+4He's only posting here because his dickless hero Rush Limbaugh is off today.
- cuteseal, on 02/23/2008, -0/+3Great article...
Another DIY photo frame project here, with lots of pics!
http://www.shuttertalk.com/articles/digitalframe - ttsr, on 02/23/2008, -1/+4I use my old laptop just as a clock!
- EtherGnat, on 02/23/2008, -0/+3If only you could find *ahem* interesting photos somewhere for your digital frame....
- antdude, on 02/24/2008, -0/+2What can a P150 MMX Compaq Amrada 1585 DMT with 16 MB of RAM and 2 GB HDD do? It ran Windows 95 OSR2.
- subgeniusd, on 02/23/2008, -0/+2Anyone posting here on weekends is probably in the same boat.......or avoiding too many "friends", similar situation in a way.
- swab, on 02/23/2008, -1/+3Docking station...
- blzbulb, on 02/23/2008, -0/+2What I did was not as ambitious as these ideas, I put Winamp, on it and used it as a music player / alarm clock.
- LANjackal, on 02/24/2008, -0/+2Xubuntu rescued my 1GHz Toshiba Satellite with 128MB RAM. Good stuff :)
- ussoldier, on 02/25/2008, -0/+2Prop up a wobble table leg
- atbnet, on 02/23/2008, -0/+2Old laptops are a great way to learn Linux. About seven years ago I decided to put Mandrake, now Mandriva, on my laptop and went at it. This way if you break something you aren't down a computer. Plus a lot of server software runs better on Linux for doing projects.
- illmonkey, on 02/23/2008, -0/+2Awesome, now where did I put that laptop?
- raptorphile, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1Dugg for featuring a pic of an iBook G4. Classic machine to try to give a "new life". Mine lasted about 5 months past AppleCare.
- aldenhg, on 02/23/2008, -1/+2Trap shooting.
- subgeniusd, on 02/23/2008, -1/+2Since today you can get a 17" laptop for under $1,000. with more power then the average 3 yr old desktop your point is only relevant for gamers. Who for some reason don't want game consoles.
- kodek, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1RDC would be way too slow over a mobile internet connection, even wifi, to do TV, radio, or anything else.
- iunex, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1Any recommendations for a 386 with 4megs of ram laptop? :D
- bananafranco, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1My old G4 laptop with a cracked screen sits now happily on the shelf and is now web/ftp/mail and vpn server. Great way to learn server setup ^_^
- solidus636, on 02/23/2008, -0/+1Why yes, yes I have.
- andycr512, on 02/24/2008, -0/+1I do game engine development; you can't get too much more power-hungry than that. The laptop I use as a desktop, which is more than enough for it (2Ghz C2D, GF7600), was only $1,100... You really can't say you -need- all the power only a desktop can provide unless you work on -extremely- power-hungry stuff, like 3D modeling for movies (with extremely high poly counts).
- gnoshme, on 02/23/2008, -1/+2It's all true, and at the same time you have to remember that old laptops are not the most reliable things on the planet, so have fun with them, but don't start using them as backup servers!
- je12u, on 02/23/2008, -2/+3If you agree with frakingcylons...whats your comment doing wayyy down here??
- ussoldier, on 02/25/2008, -0/+1Its not Nixie. But it could be. With Nixieclock
- shanesemler, on 03/13/2008, -0/+1People seriously need to stop pushing Linux as an option for ***** computers. Ever run Linux on a NEW computer? It flies on my quad core at work. Linux kicks ass, it's not some POS operating system for POS hardware.
- cassaffousth, on 03/03/2008, -0/+1Damn small linux http://damnsmalllinux.org/
- antdude, on 02/25/2008, -0/+1Well, only if it is dead. It still works. :P
- dandonia, on 02/24/2008, -0/+1expensive clock. Do some kid a favour, buy a clock and donate the laptop. Hell if you cant afford a clock get the kid to swop you his
- shiitake, on 02/24/2008, -0/+1Mine makes for a great paperweight, doorstop, and sea monkey aquarium stand!
- urgan, on 02/24/2008, -0/+1i use one as an mp3 alarm clock. it was free and the screen is damaged. better yet, it came with his own ups inside.
- Elranzer, on 02/24/2008, -0/+1Install MS-DOS or Windows 95 as its OS, and run those older games that just won't seem to work correctly in XP, DOSbox or even in VMware.
- leandrotami, on 02/24/2008, -1/+2I hate seeing old, but functional, computers lying around and accumulating dust. I think in the very complex technology that it was required to make them and I inmediately try to find new uses for them. But c'mon, having spare laptops lying around? trashing computers only because they're old? You're lucky people, I wonder if you realize it.
- ussoldier, on 02/25/2008, -0/+1I got a bunch of Apple Powerbooks... 868040 25mghz... total crap. Cost thousands and thousands of dollars at one time. I could use them as wordprocessors, but guess what, no ethernet, and the trackpads are flaking out on every single one of them. At least on the older Mac laptops the trackball still works. But again, not ethernet. All you have are floppy drives that have gone flakey belly up with time. I think I'll take them to the Apple campus and hurl them at whatever cubicle windows I see. And shout "here's your crap back! now give me my money back! you said this was more comptuer than I would ever need!"
- ussoldier, on 02/25/2008, -0/+1Post it on ebay for the original price you paid for it, plus some for the software upgrades you've done to it. Always good for a laugh.
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