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https://www.pcmag.com/news/avoid-the-trash-heap-15-great-uses-for-an-old-pc
In 2019, after seven years of slumps, PC sales went up by the tiniest increment—0.3 percent. Demand then surged in recent weeks as people shifted to work-from-home setups due to COVID-19 quarantines. Which means some of you may be getting a new computer. But what do you do with the old PC?
You may be tempted to go the easy route and just junk it. But don't. If that laptop or desktop was created any time in the last decade, you'd be surprised by how much life you (or others) can get out of it. I'm not talking about limping along, but of ways to bring an old PC back to useful life.
[This editor can vouch for plenty of life in old boxes. For the past 4 years, a now-nearly-decade-year-old Core 2 Duo Laptop with 6 GB RAM has been my primary computer.--martyb]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:21PM (1 child)
Sure, but do you need it? I do software development on the Q6600 system and apart from a few very short, brief bursts it never goes above about 5% load. In terms of power use, the whole system sits at about 120W power draw from the mains. So it's faster than I need, draws very little power, didn't cost that much - I got it when the 6600 was already last year/months/whatever's model - and best of all it's completely silent. That's why I'm still using it now, it was built as part of a silent PC, first time I turned it on I got a failed fan alarm because the fans virtually never run and the system assumed the fans were dead rather than not needed. There's just no need to replace it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:36PM
It depends on your use case. If we nix gaming, we'll have to get creative. Fancy launching your own DeepFakes studio?
The hardware has to come before the software. Achieve a 1000x speedup, and something interesting will follow.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]