If you are anything like my family, you’ll have a couple of old laptops at home that you do not know what to do with. There isn’t anything wrong with either of the two old laptops we own – they both work, but both have slowed down to the point where they are just not fast enough to use comfortably anymore. The operating systems on them are old and one has an OS that is no longer supported.
The other day I nearly threw them out, but in the end I found myself unable to put them in the bin. Then I started wondering whether there was anything else I could do with them and started to look online to come up with some ideas. Here is what I found out www.laptop-screen.net.
Sell it
These days it is easy to sell a laptop and there are a lot of ways to do it. You can take the traditional route i.e. offer it for sale in local newspapers and shop windows, though a far easier option is to use the internet. You can easily list your laptop for sale on classified websites. Craigslist is the biggest, but there are plenty of others. If you have an eBay account or are a member of another auction site then you can sell an unwanted laptop on one of these. On the web, you will also find firms who specifically advertise that they buy old laptops, and most will give you a free quote.
If you do choose to sell your laptop in this way it is very important to remove any personal information before sending your machine to the new owner. Doing so will protect you and anyone else who has used the machine from the threat of identity theft. There are plenty of step-by-step articles on the web that explain how to remove personal details in more detail. Simply deleting files is not adequate – you need to remove all trace of them to ensure that they cannot be restored and the details garnered by ID thieves.
Recycling the parts
If you do not want to sell your old laptop but are not particularly technically minded you can still potentially remove and use some of the parts as spares for your new laptop. Removing RAM and hard drives is just a case of removing a few screws and unplugging the part – you can then put any spare working memory into your new machine to give it an upgrade.
Using an old laptop for something else
On the other hand, if you are quite techy you could re-engineer your laptop and use it for something else. It is possible to turn an old laptop into a spare monitor, a digital picture frame, or even a media centre or ripper.
Even if you are not confident about working with technology, it is always worth giving one of these projects a go. You’ll be able to find videos to show you how to do most of these projects.