What to do with an older laptop? on the Peoria.com Forums

I recently became the "official" owner of a Dell M90 laptop. It's not that old, but I really don't have any use for it (other laptops and desktops).

It has a Core 2 Duo processor, 320GB HD, 4GB of RAM I believe, as it was originally used as an engineering workstation.

What should I do with this thing? I was thinking about using it as a file server next to my TV, but it's overkill for that. Any ideas?

well, if it really serves little purpose for you, you may want to consider contacting Texas School f/t Blind. My son got a monstrocity of a computer (O-L-D) that came with the software he really wanted (ZoomText). For $100 "donation" from me, he got ZoomText (it was about $500 for the software), but it came with the entire computer. I have no idea why they bundled it like that, but they did. Just wanted the software.

They may have switched to laptops by now. This was about 8 years ago that we got it.

Make a youtube video of yourself shooting it in the back yard.

Do you know any students who could use it, or donate it to a charity?

RULE THE WORLD!

If I made up a good story, maybe I could make it on the national networks!

I was thinking about donating it, but I'm going to have to re-image it and I don't know how I feel about donating a machine with bootleg Windows on it; wouldn't want to get anyone in trouble, despite the very low likelihood.

If it's in decent shape I'll buy it off you. $40-50. Of course I'll need to look over it first.

Go all Office Space on it

It's not that much of a piece of ****..

Take out the harddrive, break it into a million pieces and throw the rest away.

If you really want to donate it, wipe the HD and load it with Linux.

Have you seen my stapler?

I wouldn't do that to anyone, that's horrible. "Wow, thanks for the donated laptop! What the hell is this?.."

I second this option. wipe it off and load a free os.
Linux has some cool free learning software for little kids too.

There's no way I'm loading Linux on it, unless I suddenly found myself with a dearth of time and the desire to tinker with an operating system. Nor would I do that to a donatee, who presumably wouldn't have little experience with a computer. What good is Linux experience to a newbie?

It's a great experience. It's learning something new and learning something that a lot of peripheral devices are based on.

There's no reason to load Linux. Chances are, it has a certificate of authenticity for a Windows OS on it. Having said that, I probably wouldn't take the time to wipe it and reload Windows just to donate it.

Throw it in your closet and wait for your real computer to blow up, then you'll be glad you kept it.