[SOLVED] I don't know if it is the right place to ask but how do you deal with laptops that you no longer use?

[runningw]

I don't know if it is the right place to ask but how do you deal with laptops that you no longer use?
Do you throw them away, tear them apart to take useful components or?

 

[Barty1884]

Depends on the specs. If still usable, a basic refurb/replacement drive & sell it?

 

[rchris]

...or pass it on to a "starving student." I've known a few students who were trying to get by in college with their smartphones. Not too easy to type up term papers that way.

 

[gplayersv]

Here's a thought. I have an older Asus laptop, with an i3 350M proc, 4 gigs ram. I wanted to sell it but the sell price was bad so I started using it as my media center. I added an external hdd of 2 TB, couldn't be happier. It's connected by wire to my main router, so all TV's can access everything on it with no lag.

 

[USAFRet]

Depends.
If usable, clean install of a new OS, and donate to someone who would otherwise not have a system.
or
A media center for your house.
or
A whole house firewall box.
or
a disposable testbox, that you can wipe as needed. I have a now 10 year old low end Toshiba, that I used for initial Win 10 testing when it was first released.

However, I also have a kneehigh+ stack of laptops in the garage, that are absolutely no longer usable. Various levels of broken, or simply too old.

 

[runningw]

Depends on the specs. If still usable, a basic refurb/replacement drive & sell it?

Sell it on ebay or craigslist? Is there any online store dedicated to electronics?

 

[AllanGH]

Most of the laptops I'v stopped using have been because of no video on the LCD, and I'm not in the mood to order a new cold cathode driver for them (usually just not worth the price).

I rip off the displays and run them headless as a small file server, or firewall on the home network. They also make decent data acquisition nodes, or home automation hubs.

 

[jsmithepa]

I keep it to run some of my legacy W32 Apps. Tried to do these in a VM but not consistently, so old laptop always works.