Dec 27 2006
What Should I Do With My Old PC?
We have three computers in the house now: my main monster, my wife’s new laptop, and an old beast. I use a wireless router for the laptop, and the old PC has a wireless card. I’m thinking just for backups, setting up a remote control software on it to control it from my main PC.
That’s exactly what I’ve done. Slow, yeah, but a good feeling to know I’ve got backups on another machine. It’s also a good clunker to do weird tests on. It’s got WinXP on it but I swear I’m going to test Linux on it sometime in the coming months. The only way I can see getting rid of it is if I end up with a faster clunker somehow.
I use Remote Desktop to connect to my old machine and I use it for backups as well as DVD backup. I also use it to access my work e-mail which requires IE 6.
I still have mysql, apache, and php all on that machine too.
If I had another spare computer (I have mine running Ubuntu, my wife’s and my son’s running XP) I would definitely use it to try out new Linux or BSD distributions. It’s great to have the ability to play with other stuff without challenging your important files. Sun now has an open source distro as well, I understand.
It seems like the world is opening up for experimentation. A spare computer could be a thing of beauty!
I am in a similar position, ready to get two new computers and I got three already, Using my old mini tower as a sort of email firewall, and backup storage. I need the space I could save by ditching the dinosaurs, but I might need em in the future, or maybe I am just paranoid.
I’m copping out - I only want one PC for surfing at home, ripping DVD’s (oops) and the kids schoolwork, and really just want machines that work - I’m not into playing with OS’s for fun. But for backup - I’m about to buy an MVIX 760HD for the TV, and equip it with a 400G drive. Total cost ~US$400, and it gives a network enabled independent drive that I can back up to AND it does it’s main duty playing all the popular DVD’s to the telly without having the kids make big piles of DVD’s out of their cases getting scratched.
I use an external hard-drive for backups now. That old PC is now collecting dust. The kids use my wife’s laptop, so I have no use for the old PC now. I’m not sure what I should do with it now; store it somewhere for a “just in case” moment, or savage its hard-drive for my current computer and trash the rest?