Any creative ideas on what to do with a couple of old ACER Aspire One machines?
They are currently on UBUNTU but are surplus to requirements. Want to set up something a bit groovy

Media servers/NAS devices/Headless CrashPlan servers for your family to back up to/Home Monitoring

Or – donate them to charity? 🙂

I had the same conundrum last 18-24months ago.

ran them on linux for a bit but ended up getting 2x chrombooks instead.

The Ones wer v tired, so I junked them in the end, but before I did I salvaged the 18650 cells and have a nice stash of LED torch cells/portable phone charger packs.

(see eBay for power banks w/o cells to make your own)

i use our old aspire one for a vehicle diagnostic machine running peugeot planet/lexia and tech 2 – covers all the vehicles i work on regularly.

Rip out the HDD and boot linux off of a read only USB with the TOR browser.

Order loads of class A’s off of silkroad

see what happens.

If you want to make a media centre or PC for some other purpose, take it apart and pull out the motherboard. You can then repackage it in a funky box (remembering to keep the heatsink and fan ofc). Like a Raspberry Pi but even cheaper 🙂

Like a Raspberry Pi but cheaper noisier, bigger and more expensive to run

ftfy

Bitcoin mining. That should kill a bit of time.

Like a Raspberry Pi but cheaper noisier, bigger and more expensive to run

No, you crossed out cheaper, and the laptops will definitely be cheaper since he already owns them.

I wouldn’t know how to mine the bitcoins or what to do with them if i found them

Don’t worry no-one else does either.

No, you crossed out cheaper, and the laptops will definitely be cheaper since he already owns them.

Ahhh, but they cost £££ when he bought them originally, as opposed to the Pi which costs £25.
😉

true, but these had a screen and a keyboard and storage when i bought them

Bitcoin mining with an aspire one would be like real mining with a teaspoon 🙂

true, but these had a screen and a keyboard and storage when i bought them

rats!

I wouldn’t know how to mine the bitcoins or what to do with them if i found them

Have them cut, polished and set in a lovely tiara

Ahhh, but they cost £££ when he bought them originally, as opposed to the Pi which costs £25.

And RPis weren’t invented then either. Point proved, I think.

[stop editing…. I saw the first one]

I wouldn’t know how to mine the bitcoins or what to do with them if i found them

Don’t worry no-one else does either.

found a bar/cafe in Delft that accepts them

but since the exchange rate varies so much, you could order a cappucino and apple tart for the equivalent of €5 and it might be either €2.50 or €10 by the time you pay.

kept my eeePC to do all the stuff I’ve not (yet) got the chromebook to do. got it running the arduino software which is Java. next job is our custom java software and dropbox (or similar), when I can find some round tuits.

not sure what i’ll do with it then.

Media box probably won’t be much cop, the wifes better, faster Samsung N150 struggles to play anything above 720p and really shits the beds at 1080. Unless you want a music server for the kitchen I wouldn’t bother.

Sell them both and get something worthwhile. Or use them for diagnostics as TR suggested.

I’d say an XBMC too.

or

ducktape it onto the handlebars of an exercise bike

Samsung N150 struggles to play anything above 720p

Add more RAM for very little money. Mine’s maxed (all the way up to 2Gb 😉 ) and can play 1080p onto the TV happily.

Mine has 2GB already. I suspect this may be indicative of greater problems in this case, hmm…