We’ve just rolled around to move-out week for almost every apartment in town, and a person whose stuff I’m storing while he’ll be apartmentless is paying me with his old PC, which he’s already replaced and was planning on throwing away anyway. It’s got a couple of viruses or something, he tells me, and he simply doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. So now it’s mine. But I already have a newer, better PC and don’t need this as my primary one. What options do I have, as far as cleaning the thing up and making an interesting toy out of it?
A 10 second glance at the specs tells me it has XP Home Edition sp2, approx 2.2ghz processor and 256mb ram. It was manufactured by Gateway, so I assume they have a system-restore disk which I haven’t received from my friend. I do not have install disks for XPhome, and there’s not enough ram there to justify XPpro. How about putting a unix-based OS on the box? I’ve never done that before, this would be my first try. Which one should I start with? What useful tools would I gain by having more than one OS in my home?
If it’s got a big enough hard drive, get rid of the viruses (if you can do it without wiping out the system), connect it to your stereo and use it as a jukebox.
Don’t hook it up to the internet and it won’t get any more viruses.
That sounds like a pretty decent computer if you listed the specs right (the ram needs to be updated to 512mb at least for a few bucks).
I would just run virus and spyware scans on it and keep it as a Windows machine. I would then connect it your primary computer and the internet through a wireless network (need access point+ card).
From there, you could do all kinds of things. You could use it as a stereo. You could play mult-play games. Two people could surf the net. Importantly, you could back up important files on it and still have them immediately accessible. There are lots of creative things you could do.
If you are on broad band, set it up as a server and host all your own pictuters and a web page and all the other stuff that has been mentioned already…
