Two years ago when I bought a new laptop I wasn't sure what to do with my older one. This was roughly at the same time of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit for a defective video card for that specific model. In my case, it requird two logic board replacements. I talked about the second replacement on my blog in 2008. Essentially that means the resale value is near zero.
For a little while I used my old laptop as some kind of server, but the biggest problem is that the new replacement was even noisier than the previous model, and even if it was hooked on a TV set, the laptop's bright screen would turn back on each time the TV was off. I eventually got a Mac Mini to replace it as a server.
Nowadays, I use the old laptop to do some work from home when my new laptop is still at work, and it works surprisingly well for that. You see, after all the hype about tablets, I still end up working faster with a full mouse and keyboard, let alone a 17-inch screen. Since more and more of our stuff is in "the cloud", having an old laptop works quite well as some kind of "Internet console". Now, to be safe, it's still a good idea to place an up-to-date OS and software on it to not get viruses, and that's why having it equipped with 4GB of RAM all those years ago eventually paid off.
Still, does that make me a hoarder of old electronic stuff? Or should I call it "recycling"?
Published on April 29, 2012 at 21:17 EDT
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