Few days ago at home, my father decided to sell our old computer for 5000 bucks.

 

keep the old desktop

Don't throw me!

There is nothing wrong with it, it sports a Pentium 4 1.9Ghz processor, 512GBs 256MBs of DDR RAM, Intel 845 based Gigabyte motherboard, a Pinnacle-PCTV stereo TV-Tuner card and 40GBs of PATA harddisk. It is still alive in the sense that it turns on and off but it’s too outdated to run any new applications. It is my first computer which we bought in 2002. Needless to say many good (and a bad memory involving bike-accident) are attached with it. For me it is a friend who taught me many things. I wasn’t just ready to part with it.

So I convinced my father that this computer is still worth keeping.

If you too have an old computer which works; I bet it can still serve you for few more years to come.  Don’t throw it away, here are few ways to reuse a not so obsolete Computer.

Make it a single purpose computer : Clear out all the programs and keep only one or two which performs some specific functions. For example you can make it a Web-Surfing kiosk. All you need is a basic Operating System (Linux works best) and a web-browser (Chromium is very light).

Upgrade :  If it is not too old you can probably upgrade few hardware components to make it run marathons again (not literally of course). A simple RAM upgrade or  addition of a Graphic Card will give your Computer a huge performance boost. An upgrade is much better than purchasing a whole new system again!

Turn it into a media server : That’s what I did! For this you need to  clear all unnecessary data from computer and install the latest version of your preferred operating system (Windows if your family is going to use this) with all patches. You will also need a fast internet connection for downloading all those TV-Shows and music from iTunes. USB TV-Tuners are cheap, you can get one to record your favorite TV shows. Upgrade your hard-disk to at least 320GBs and get a wireless router. Once everything is installed and your router is ready and turned on setup a network. Access the media from any laptop in the house.

Your computer will thank you for these extra years of life. ;-)