PC for all...
Hi there! I know, I've been away for about a year or so... well, just have been busy... what I'm going to write about today is not exactly a very techie idea, but it is related to tech and useful for many, I hope...
Many of us got old PCs lying around. With our PCs going GHz on speeds, the 500 Mhz ones are just gathering dusts cuz maybe you tried to salvage all you could from there and now it's nothing but the box with motherboard and processor. With a little initiative, we can do a lot with these... Here's a few ideas...
Linux Box: yeah - I guess many of you saw it coming. A linux box is basically a PC with the bare necessities. If you have a broadband at home, then this is the perfect security solution. Just add two lan cards, some old RAM and a CF to Hard Drive adapter. CF (Compact Flash) are super cheap as no one is using them much and they come in as large as 4GB. That adapter can be slotted with the IDE port on a PC and to the PC it's nothing but a 4GB hard drive. Not go ahead and install xubuntu. Xubuntu is a smaller version of Ubuntu which can work with less than 192MB RAM and very low hard disk space. Now this is our basic linux box. With this, you can do quite a few things.
a. Linux Firewall Box: Now just configure the built in linux firewall and have all the network data run through this box - one lan card for input and one for output. With all of us running Bit-Torrent and having our ports open to the world, this sure will take care of a lot of securty issues that we have.
b. Donate: Yep! Donate this pc to some poor school/orphanage. They sure will appreciate as kids will learn how to use OpenOffice (Which comes built in) and the basics of computing. And with some little tweaking, you can make the GUI look like Windows too. I have seen people trying out Ubuntu and doing great while all they knew is how to use Windows.
c. Dedicated Server: Add a hard disk with it and make it a dedicated file server. If your office is running some Java/PHP based office management software, pick the old PC that is not much of a use and convert it to a black box server. Use a remote login software to setup the box, in that way you're freeing up a monitor as well.
I myself got 2 old PCs lying at home eating dust. I'm sure many of us got at least one of these legacy devices which neither got any selling value nor usable. I bet there's lots of poor student out there who can't afford a PC and they sure will appreciate this gift. I have seen this orphanage type NGO who are struggling with two old PC running super slow Excel on Windows 98. Next time I go home, let's see if they allow me to turn those into a linux box and have a faster experience with OpenOffice.
cheers!
Many of us got old PCs lying around. With our PCs going GHz on speeds, the 500 Mhz ones are just gathering dusts cuz maybe you tried to salvage all you could from there and now it's nothing but the box with motherboard and processor. With a little initiative, we can do a lot with these... Here's a few ideas...
Linux Box: yeah - I guess many of you saw it coming. A linux box is basically a PC with the bare necessities. If you have a broadband at home, then this is the perfect security solution. Just add two lan cards, some old RAM and a CF to Hard Drive adapter. CF (Compact Flash) are super cheap as no one is using them much and they come in as large as 4GB. That adapter can be slotted with the IDE port on a PC and to the PC it's nothing but a 4GB hard drive. Not go ahead and install xubuntu. Xubuntu is a smaller version of Ubuntu which can work with less than 192MB RAM and very low hard disk space. Now this is our basic linux box. With this, you can do quite a few things.
a. Linux Firewall Box: Now just configure the built in linux firewall and have all the network data run through this box - one lan card for input and one for output. With all of us running Bit-Torrent and having our ports open to the world, this sure will take care of a lot of securty issues that we have.
b. Donate: Yep! Donate this pc to some poor school/orphanage. They sure will appreciate as kids will learn how to use OpenOffice (Which comes built in) and the basics of computing. And with some little tweaking, you can make the GUI look like Windows too. I have seen people trying out Ubuntu and doing great while all they knew is how to use Windows.
c. Dedicated Server: Add a hard disk with it and make it a dedicated file server. If your office is running some Java/PHP based office management software, pick the old PC that is not much of a use and convert it to a black box server. Use a remote login software to setup the box, in that way you're freeing up a monitor as well.
I myself got 2 old PCs lying at home eating dust. I'm sure many of us got at least one of these legacy devices which neither got any selling value nor usable. I bet there's lots of poor student out there who can't afford a PC and they sure will appreciate this gift. I have seen this orphanage type NGO who are struggling with two old PC running super slow Excel on Windows 98. Next time I go home, let's see if they allow me to turn those into a linux box and have a faster experience with OpenOffice.
cheers!
posted by iNsane at
1:02 PM
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