Best LOCAL use for an old computer

[ChrisGreaves]

My situation is typical; my neighbor is done with her old computer.
500MB RAM; 10 GB drive and a 6 GB data drive I installed for her a year ago when she ran out of space on the 10 GB.
(I bought her a 1-year delay in spending money on a new computer, is all).

Now her Machine sits in my hallway, both drives re-partitioned and re-formatted, so fairly clean.

We have several re-use depots in Toronto, and quite a few computer-for-Africa organizations.

But apart from those, what are the uses for such a machine? (Also, typically, neighbor has "lost" her Windows XP CD ...)
I already have an old Big Beige Box with a 400GB drive partitioned into Windows (C) and Data (D), holding 27GB of music; my jukebox, print server, scanner server etc.

It seems to me that Neighbour's old machine is useful locally (within 1 mile of here, no shipping costs) to

• A little-old-lady who wants only to use web mail to chat with her married daughter in New Zealand
• A little-old-lady who wants a place to store copies of photos taken with the digital camera her kids are going to give her this Christmas (and to save photos of the grandkids in NZ)
• A little-old-lady, now retired, who wants to spend her remaining years writing letters in Write/Wordpad to her local politicians complaining about something.

What other uses can you dream up for a slow old machine, pretty well useless for today's Win7 environment?

I'm interested primarily in NEIGHBOURHOOD RE-USE without sending a machine on an expensive trip; the sort of notice you could pin to the local church or supermarket bulletin board.

[John Gray]

Does the system unit still have the CoA holographic sticker on the side with the Product Key? If so, a Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher can reinstall the operating system, and give it a new/old lease of life.

[jonwallace]

With a couple of extra harddrives and freeNAS, it could be turned into a NAS box for someone who doesn't mind the noise, the power consumption or the fact that some vital component could die at a moments notice...

Disclaimer: I'm making some assumptions about a PC with a 10GB harddrive...

[Bigaldoc]

Chris, I've had a few instances of good luck with SMALL local churches who had nothing. Even a most basic computer can help with church bulletins and things like that.

[ChrisGreaves]

Does the system unit still have the CoA holographic sticker on the side with the Product Key? If so, a Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher can reinstall the operating system, and give it a new/old lease of life.

Hi John, and thanks for the tip.
I didn't know that about the holographic&MSAuthorized refurbisher.


There is no holographic sticker to be seen, but I'm getting in touch with Compugen here in Toronto to see what avenues are available.
FWIW Richmond Hill is a day's walk from here, so it is outside my 'local solution' area, but worth asking, at any rate, to see if WinXP can be installed for a moderate licensing fee.

[DaveA]

I and a few others will do a "Home refurb" of these machines and "give" them to some senior that could use one. We pass almost all of the machines on, some have been used for spare parts, but what the heck the seniors love them.

Seems we always have a list of seniors that could use one. Check with some of your local Computer clubs and see if they can help you out.

[ChrisGreaves]

... doesn't mind the noise, the power consumption

Hi Jon; you are spot-on!
That describes the old IBM server sitting in the hallway with the new addition from this morning.
I bought it 5 years ago when I *thought* it had 4 removable IDE drive trays; it has 4 removable SCSI trays, 17GB each. Rats.
I have a pile of old IDEs from various computers, typically 6GB and upwards.
I could drop the 4 largest into a box, but I'm not sure what , say, 100GB would do for me scattered amongst 4 IDE drives.
I recall a month ago learning about span-across-physical-volume stuff, but I'm not sure that a 500MB WinXP system would deal with that very well, and for all that complexity I've still got a system with a relatively small hard drive by today's standards.
(I said earlier I had a 27GB jukebox; I see my scanner/digital photos now total 20GB, and I don't really consider myself an AV-junkie).
A guy at NaSPA told me that the IBM was a noisy air-filtering floor heater, said that the onset of winter was just the right time to buy it!

I'm still curious as to what a normal-end-user might do with such a machine; email, reading The Toronto Stir, and writing letters is all I could come up with.

P.S. Please, what's a NAS box - a network server?

[ChrisGreaves]

Chris, I've had a few instances of good luck with SMALL local churches who had nothing. Even a most basic computer can help with church bulletins and things like that.

Right Al!
That's where i was headed with "the sort of notice you could pin to the local church or supermarket bulletin board", although it's tough to reconcile a free limited WinXP machine with a $200 (last time I looked) netbook from the local office store.
I have one of those, well, $300 a year ago; an ACER Aspire One, pokey little keyboard, but superb for a senior with plenty of spare time to scroll through newspapers, twenty lines at a time.

[ChrisGreaves]

...but what the heck the seniors love them.

Hi Dave.
I don't have to go very far to find a senior; I are one.
But pray tell, what DOES get them excited about a 500MB WinXP slug?
What is it they are doing with them that is so appealing?
That was part of my initial curiosity.

P.S. I guess a large part of it is "FREE", but then they'd pay for ISP charges, right?

[jonwallace]

P.S. Please, what's a NAS box - a network server?

Network Attached Storage. I used to have one at work (utilizing a defunct printer IP address) that computer services didn't know about. My colleague and I used it to store files that we wanted access to, but we didn't necessarily want CSU to see (nothing dodgy, mostly freeware utilities, undeleters, uninstallers etc) Then the 10 year old PC died and the IP address was returned to the pool. Ah, good times.

[ChrisGreaves]

Network Attached Storage. I used to have one at work (utilizing a defunct printer IP address) that

Thanks Jon.
So it's a storage "box", in my case it'd be a PC with as many/much drives space as i can cram into it, addressed by an IP address of the form 111.222.333.444 rather than by the standard \\BigBeigeBox\DriveD convention.
Is that it?

[John Gray]

Is that a rare sighting of IPv5?!

[ChrisGreaves]

Is that a rare sighting of IPv5?!

No, John, it's a typical manifestation of my level of ignorance.
You should know that by now!

[DaveA]

...but what the heck the seniors love them.

I guess I should of said seniors without a computer. If one has never had a computer, even a old XP slug will get them started.

[jonwallace]

So it's a storage "box", in my case it'd be a PC with as many/much drives space as i can cram into it, addressed by an IP address of the form 111.222.333.444 rather than by the standard \\BigBeigeBox\DriveD convention.
Is that it?

Yup

[jonwallace]

Is that a rare sighting of IPv5?!

No, John, it's a typical manifestation of my level of ignorance.
You should know that by now!

Ignore him. Why should we stop at 255? There are plenty more numbers!!

[ChrisGreaves]

Yup

Ta!

Ignore him. Why should we stop at 255? There are plenty more numbers!!

Now that was just downright mean. But horribly accurate

[DaveInPitt]

After an inexpensive memory upgrade to 1gb, install Linux Ubuntu (free\stable\non-virus prone OS) which includes free open source software for virtually anything you want to use the computer for. This will become a PC for just about anybody's use, (i.e., individuals, non-profit organizations, etc). I've started wiping XP off of "old" PCs and replacing with Linux, especially when the XP license is invalid, cannot be found, etc. If you have never installed\work with Linux, give it a try. It has the look and feel of iOS.

[ChrisGreaves]

After an inexpensive memory upgrade to 1gb, install Linux Ubuntu ...

Well, DaveInPitt, it comes as a great surprise to me to find myself responding to your post from a FireFox browser running under UBuntu loaded from a bootable USB memory key.
You see, I am, as usual, behind the times.
Who knew it could be so easy?

I don't know enough (yet) to work out who/why/where/what is the Ubuntu Equivalent of Explorer to report back the two files I used.
I know that the Ubuntu site let me download a 600MN ISO file, and another site (linked from the Ubuntu site) let me download a <1MB installer, and i rant the installer and here I are.

If it is this easy, why wouldn't a pensioner just buy an 8GB memory key ($CDNB10 as I type) and run from the memory key on whatever computer they happened to be near?

YAY for DaveInPitt

P.S. To everyone else: If I can do it, so can you! (You know who you are ...)

[ChrisGreaves]

After an inexpensive memory upgrade to 1gb, install Linux Ubuntu ...

(15 minutes later).
OK so the old DELL Beige Box offers the following boot sequences:

• scsi,a,c
• scsi,c,a
• c only
• ls/zip,c
• a,c,scsi
• c,a,scsi
• c,cdrom,a
• cdrom,c,a
• cdrom,a,c
• d,a,scsi
• e,a,scsi
• f,a,scsi

It won't boot from a USB key, I tried ringing the obvious changes, and a memory key is not d,e,f or LS/Zip.

It's an old computer.

So now I am returning to the two files downloaded (ubuntu-11.10-desktop-i386.iso & Universal-USB-Installer-1.8.7.3.exe) via the pages at http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download and will make a bootable CD rather than a bootable memory key and see how we go.
(Going out for supper so a delay ensues ...)