Five Things to Do together with your Old Laptop [Howto]

Jan 26th 2011
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We get it, your new laptop is shiny, super-fast and awesome. But don’t overlook your old laptop! It doesn’t must sit around and collect dust. Listed below are five super easy belongings you can do to rejuvenate it.

Getting Started

Well, you’ll need an old laptop. And uh, that’s practically it. Don’t worry, your junky 8-pound PC notebook need to be okay, each one of these tasks aren’t taxing on the hardware at all.

Turn it into a Home Server

Five Things to Do together with your Old Laptop [Howto]
Turning your cast-off portable into a whole fledged home server will squeeze probably the most use out of your once great machine. By connecting it for your home network and tinkering with the correct software, you’ll have a quiet and effective server that may be used to backup files, store photos, and heck, even stream all of your media files. And because laptops are designed to be portable, your new server will likely be naturally compact and straightforward on the electric bill.

• What you’ll do
Backup files to and stream media from the laptop turned home server
• What you’ll need
A laptop, FreeNAS software, and a home network
• Setup time
About an hour

• Download the FreeNAS ISO Image and burn it onto a CD
• Insert the CD to your laptop and then restart and boot your PC from the CD
• Install FreeNAS
• Remember the IP address that’ll pop up after FreeNAS is installed
• Jump over to another computer on a similar network and punch inside the IP address on a browser
• Login with username: admin password: freenas
• Setup the right disks for sharing and user computers for accessing

Transform it into a Digital Photo Frame

Repurposing a lappy into a digital photo frame will make it the simplest digital photo frame you’ll ever use, I guarantee it. Why? Because most digital photo frames suck. They’d've been good ideas once upon a time, but the affordable ones typically have smallish screens, usually lack Wi-Fi, and are always a pain inside the ass to take advantage of. Having said that, your old laptop cum new digital photo frame can be in a position to do all the pieces a mean frame can’t: pull photos from Flickr, update pictures on the fly, and blow their own horns your Grandma’s sweet, smiling face on its big beautiful screen.

How does it work? The magic is in a chunk of software called Slickr which displays all of your Flickr photos in a screensaver. It’s really the fitting and easiest method to turn a laptop into a digital photo frame. You’ll should do some actual hacking of the laptop’s body, nevertheless it’s well worth the effort. For a superb primer, Repair4Laptop has an excellent page detailing countless digital photo frames converted from various laptop models.

• What that you could do
Display Flickr photos on the simplest digital photo frame which you could get
• What you’ll need
A laptop, a framebox, Slickr, a Flickr account and some steady hands
• Setup time
About a day

How to build a digital photo frame:
• Build (or buy) an immense enough framebox to store your laptop
• Download Slickr here and hook it up along with your Flickr credentials
• Remove the LCD screen from the laptop carefully (remember to gently unplug the ribbon cable that connects the LCD to the laptop)
• Rejigger those internals into the framebox as necessary
• Connect the photo frame to Wi-Fi
• Enjoy your entire Flickr pictures on a gloriously big screen

Make it a Wireless Bridge

If Wi-Fi is s-sp-spotty in your home, you may improve your signal by turning your laptop into a wireless bridge on your home network. It’s especially useful for those little nooks which can be surrounded by brick and concrete and lead and uranium and oh please god no…bookshelves and DVD racks. It’s impossible to get a signal in those places! But together with your laptop acting as a wireless extender, that dead spot could be reinvigorated with wifi juice and boosted with networked glory. It’s like using your old laptop to improve your new laptop. Teamwork!

Windows 7:
• Run an ethernet cable from your router to the laptop
• Download and install Connectify
• Find Connectify on your system tray and open it up
• Create access point name and set your password
• Turn the hotspot on

• What you are able to do
Extend your private home’s wireless network
• What you’ll need
A laptop, an ethernet cord and Connectify (for Windows 7 users)
• Setup time
About 5 minutes

Windows Vista:
• Run an ethernet cable from your router to the laptop
• Head to the Control Panel and click on Network and Sharing Center
• Click on ” installation a new connection or network”
• Create a new ad hoc wireless network
• Give your network a name and password
• Activate internet connection sharing

Mac OS X:
• Run an ethernet cable from your router to the laptop
• Head to System Preferences > Sharing and check Internet Sharing
• Choose Ethernet from ” Share your connection from:”
• Choose AirPort for ” To computers using:”
• Click on AirPort Options and set network name and password
• Surf silly

O Hai, New External Hard disk drive!

Sure, some parts of your old laptop might’ve stopped ticking but that doesn’t mean everything’s dead-if the harddisk still works, you’re within the money. In any case, a 60GB hard disk from back then still fits 60 gigabytes now. All you have to do is open your ol’ betsy up and yank the harddrive. Then, just slip it into something slightly more comfortable, like an external enclosure, that you can get online for as little as 10 bucks . And as laptop drives are tiny at 2.5″ , your external HD will run quiet, smooth and small (and won’t even desire a power source!).

• What you are able to do
Salvage a difficult drive from the laptop and use it as an external storage source
• What you’ll need
A laptop, a screwdriver, and a difficult drive enclosure
• Setup time
About an hour

How to make an external harddrive:
• Reformat your old laptop’s hard drive
• Tear apart the ol’ girl and remove her 2.5-inch brain
• Decide in the event that your hard disk drive is IDE or SATA by staring at this picture
• Buy the correct IDE or SATA 2.5″ external hard disk drive enclosure (with USB). Something like this for IDE drives or this for SATA drives.
• Plug the harddrive’s connectors (the side with the pokey things) into the enclosure’s port.
• Connect with your new laptop and configure as necessary
• Drop your files in!

The Second Monitor You’ve Always Wanted

Five Things to Do together with your Old Laptop [Howto]
Your new laptop could be able do everything you’d want it to do but at the tip of the day…it’s still just a laptop. Which implies, as shiny as it’s, that you may probably do with an even bigger monitor. Your old laptop will let you out! With a slick piece of software, you’ll be capable of use your old laptop as an easy external monitor. It doesn’t even require cables to glue ‘em together, everything is finished over your wireless network.

• What which you can do
Turn your laptop into a second monitor
• What you’ll need
A Windows laptop, the MaxiVista software and a home network
• Setup time
About 5 minutes

Here’s how you can established a second monitor to your laptop:
• Download MaxiVista here
• Make certain both laptops are on an analogous network
• Install MaxiVista on both laptops
• That’s it!

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Once you’ve always wanted to be told the way to do something but didn’t know where to start out, be happy to ask us the way to here .

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