Ideas wanted for laptop reuse

English Hardware
1

Hi all, this is not a problem as such but a request for some ideas. Not sure where else to put this.

I look after the IT for a small school, nothing very hard, a few laptops running Win7 and our office PC running OpenSuse 13.2 and one network printer. All working fine and dandy (apart from the odd glitch from the printer, see my other post). Obviously equipment purchases are expensive for us so reusing what equipment we have already is a bonus. e.g. an old Epsom scanner was found, a bit slow to start up, but works really well still.

There is an old laptop with XP installed that is not being used. I’d like to repurpose it for something else. Shame to leave it sitting there doing nothing.

Any ideas on what I can use it for? Can I use it as some sort of server, is it viable to use a laptop as a server?

2

Yes, but in long run its a greater waste to run it as server.
Old hardware tend to consume lots of electricity relative to processing and heat output it produce. Think like comparing it with Raspberry Pi for example.

My take is just install it Windows 7, and keep it as general purpose backup. You never know old, crappy notebook would become save you some day.

3

vserghi,

depends on what you really need. An old laptop makes a nice server for small environments, but keep in mind they are not designed for running 24/7, and given the age, I wouldn’t rely on it for really important stuff.

What about a kiosk PC? Place it somewhere in let’s say the teachers room and let people surf the web.
Or make it show current information, like a newsticker. Or play the TV news via web.

Uwe

4

On 2015-04-10 11:26, vserghi wrote:
> Any ideas on what I can use it for? Can I use it as some sort of server,
> is it viable to use a laptop as a server?

I do.

I have a very good but old laptop, which I got for free, that I use as
24/7 light duty server. It was a very good laptop originally, but with a
¼ or ½ gigabyte ram and 40GB HD, and single cpu core, it is no good for
current desktops such as gnome or kde, and large applications such as
libreoffice, thunderbird, firefox…

I replaced the hard disk with a new one (it is ata, so it is small),
removed the bottom, and placed the lappy over a fan, one of those made
to plug on a usb from the same laptop — but instead I power it from a
mains-usb converter. That way the entire laptop (cpu, ram, chipset,
disk) remains cool, and its own fan has little to do.

For storage I use an external disk over usb. It is slow, but lots of space.

What can it be used for?

Well, I used it for long and slow download jobs, considering my slow
1Mbit/s internet connection. It can also be used as print server, mail
server, name server, dhcp server… there are many light duties it can
do. As long as the data throughput doesn’t need to be large…

And it uses less electricity than a desktop machine, even a new one.

Some home routers can work as file servers, connecting an usb disk. My
setup above is more powerful with similar speed (usb2).

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

5

How old? Most laptops after about 2004 will run Linux perfectly well, certainly with Xfce and probably KDE. I used to run KDE on a 2004 laptop with only 756MB RAM. I have recently converted some XP laptops with 11GB RAM to Linux and they run fine. Obviously, no good for games or high definition video but perfectly adequate for most school use.

6

Sorry, having problems with editing - I meant 1GB obviously!

7

On 2015-04-12 00:26, john hudson wrote:
>
> How old? Most laptops after about 2004 will run Linux perfectly well,

The age is not that important. Amount of RAM is crucial.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

8

For something that old,
IMO you’ll need to inventory all of the hardware to evaluate what kinds of use would be most appropriate, ie CPU, RAM, I/O devices, BIOS firmware, more.

There’s a likelihood that it doesn’t run 64-bit that well… maybe well enough but not like today. So, maybe 64-bit but maybe only 32-bit.
Verify current Linux support for the hardware. Run a LiveCD or if you have a cheap replacement drive (likely only $15 or less second hand) you can do a test install.

There are many light duty or not always connected network tasks you might like to provide, maybe even just provide backup services in case your primary Server goes down (planned or unplanned). Some network services like DNS and DHCP place almost no load but can be critical if your primary goes down.

You can also purpose it for any kind of testing… Dev, ordinary network configs, more.

IMO,
TSU

9

Thanks guys.

I guessed 64-bit is out anyway, and I was thinking of a light weight DE like LXDE/LXQT or XFCE. I also need to have a closer look at the hardware and see just how much RAM and hard disk space there is. Games or graphic intensive operations were not something I was planning on anyway.

buckesfeld: I like the idea of a kiosk mode. We still use CD’s to play music for the children when learning to dance. I thought we could put all of the music on a remote hardrive and stream it to the hall where they practise. They could choose the track they wanted via the laptop.

10

Well, I looked at the hardware specs and wow!

HP Compaq nx9010
Pentium 4, 2.4GHz
512 MB of RAM (upgradeable to 1GB aparantly)
Windows XP Home SP3
No WIFI but it does have a lan at least, floppy drive!
80GB drive (4200rpm)

It’s approaching 2" thick, about 3kg in weight!

http://www.ehow.com/list_7396432_compaq-nx9010-specifications.html

I think it’s time to lay this one to rest.

11

Try puppy Linux or D.A.M.N. small Linux Either should run fine on that machine and maybe get years more of life out of it.

12

On 2015-04-18 21:06, vserghi wrote:
> I think it’s time to lay this one to rest.

Well, it is similar to the one I use as home server :slight_smile:

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))