by Mitz Pantic from Tips4pc.com
5 Ways to Use Your Old Computer and Recycle
As soon as you buy a brand new computer for yourself, a question pops up in your mind – what can you do with the old PC you have? It may be true that it is faulty or cannot live up to your present computing needs, but it has worked hard for you and deserves a second chance.
I am not saying that you should keep every dead computer bit you have, but when you see what you can actually do with some of the usually redundant parts, I am sure you will be soon waiting for your computer to blow up. I know I was scouring the house after seeing what you can do with the recycled computer parts.
5 Ways to Use Your Old Computer and Recycle
Many people rack their brains with what to do with the old computer. It is great to be able to recycle computers or some parts, but knowing what to do is another story altogether. Here are some fantastic uses for old computers.
#1. Make It a Backup PC
Often your old computer is not that old to call it completely obsolete. Most of the parts like the hard drive, DVD-player, memory chips, sound and graphic cards could be still in very good shape, including the casing and the monitor. If there is a part that is faulty, it can be easily replaced without putting too much load on your wallet. If it was too slow, you might even consider upgrading the motherboard and the processor. This doesn’t cost a whole lot of money either.
Replacing just couple of parts may turn this old device of yours to almost new – performance wise. You can use it to store all your favorite music files or videos or use it as a gaming station for your children. It can also be used for other applications like a dedicated PC for your home surveillance system or automation system.
I use an old Pc for a home theatre system. The parts that were damaged can be used in other projects too.
#2. Recycle Computers or Maybe Their Parts
If you don’t want to spend money to refurbish your old PC, at least you may consider taking out some of the parts that could be useful for you later on. Taking out and keeping them in a better place than your storage room is a more sensible idea. Store rooms are often very hot, and keeping a PC there for long time means it would breadth its last very soon. So if you take out the useful parts like soundcard, DVD player, hard drives and modem, you would be able to use these as replacement parts, in case the one just bought looses one of its sidekicks in the near future. It is also a possibility that if you have data in your old hard drive, you may also consider taking it out from the old one and hooking it up into the new one, in a master-slave configuration. This way you have more storage space and at the same time all your old data remains safe and sound with you.
Tips Continued Here
This excerpt appears with permission from Tips4PC.com.
