I have a couple of old laptops that have been kicking around under my desk for a couple of years now. Both must be 6 to 8 yrs old and were pretty rubbish even when new. Seems wrong to throw them in the bin. Whats can be done with them? Anyone take old kit for reuse?

Places like local youth clubs maybe?

Charity shop?

Run them with Linux/Ubuntu, currently have an old Dell E6400 (2008 MFD) works fine with this (just install 16.04 LTS last night)

chromebook conversion and give them away? http://lifehacker.com/turn-your-old-laptop-into-a-chromebook-with-cloudready-1740556796

Sell on ebay to some techie who’ll refurbish them, possibly.

Second putting linux on them.
Got some old laptop running linux mint. One as a garage media player and onther for little Dean to code on scratch with.

Collect dust generally.

Got a netbook though with Ubuntu on it. Mainly because it has an SD slot and I trust Linux more when writing images to SD cards for Raspberry Pi than some of the tools on Windows (as in trusting dd not to wipe my main drive, as has been reported with the recommended Windows tool for Raspberry Pi SD flashing). In fact the SD slot built into my Windows desktop seems temperamental when trying to read the cards just using Windows itself, but the netbook and Ubuntu has no problems.

Only problem is the display is knackered on it, so I’ve got it set to boot into Ubuntu and I remote access it.

I was using an old 486 laptop for a while as a console via serial cable for a server 😀 DOS disc and boot into Kermit. Retired that when I got my NAS.

One of mine is in the garage being a handy web browser (for when I **** up in the middle of fixing something) and music player. Pretty handy.

My brother turns his into digital picture frames, which I kind of like and kind of hate

If you’re in Nottingham I’ll have on for my basement, as my basement PC is on it’s last legs.

If in Hampshire or nearby check out Jamie’s Computers who may be able to recycle/reuse and do a secure wipe in the process.

I’ve just got one from my girlfriend that will be turned into a soft ether server

Try your local scout group, they might be able to use them.

That chromebook conversion looks interesting. I’ve got a pair of old Dell D505 that I may do. I put some flavour of Linux on one the other night and ran it off a USB stick…. was OK but would have been better on the HD.
I need to check what RAM they have as I suspect it may be just 500mb.

If they have serial ports, eBay to people who want them for car diabostics or XP/16 bit programmes.

As already posted, a PC charity like Southampton’s Jamie’s Computer Club, need to drop some bits down there myself.