When we look at our old hardware, we often see money spent but think whatever value was to be realized is now gone. Most old hardware has little resale value. Usually in the end computers are donated to non-profit groups or sent to the trash pile. But there is still value in those old computers if you know how to reach it.
 While your old computer may not be useful as your main use computer or playing the newest games, it can have many other uses. And many uses that you never thought of.
  Old computers can be Internet access stations, test machines, home automation controllers or even as print, file or ftp servers. Now if those computers currently have an old version of Windows you may be saying they are too slow to fit any of the mentioned uses. Correct! So we will not run Windows. Linux to the rescue.   Linux is usually today considered for high-end use but it runs just fine on hardware that would make Microsoft's current operating systems churn to a crawl. Linux can be tweaked to reduce its memory and disk requirements. There are also some Linux distro's (distributions) that are specifically designed to be installed on older hardware. There are some Linux distro's that only need a floppy disk to run. You may not get all the bells & whistles or the sirens, horns and flashing lights. But you will get a stable Operating System and something that fits your requirements. And rememebr with SAMBA support other Windows computers can access the Linux computers.   Microsoft's Windows base install has always been very large with little way to reduce it to only what you need. Linux has always been designed to only install what you need. There are Linux distro's that install only the pieces of the Operating System to make the computer a Print Server or File server. So an old computer that was running Windows 95 with less memory than your current video card has can be used. And if you want to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (although Firefox for Linux is a hundred times better as an Internet browser) you can set it up using WINE which adapts many Windows applications to run under Linux.   We have one client who had hundreds of old Windows laptops in a closet. We installed Linux on many of the laptops and now are being used as thin clients for employees to work from home. Another client was in the process of purchasing additional HP print servers at $300 each. Instead we installed Linux on decomissioned desktops and saved thousands of dollars. In many cases we have convertyed old Windows computers as Web (Apache) servers to host (internal websites) Intranet sites. Other clients have had us wipe the hard disks (to remove any traces of data), installed Linux and they gave them to employees for home use. In these cases Windows would not work for these purposes. Linux did and without purchasing new hardware.   So do not throw your old hardware out. There is still value in those old computers!
 
 
 
 
 

Website Copyright© 1998 - 2008 by: Paramount Network Systems. All Rights Reserved.