Never let it be said that PC Pro doesn’t bring harmony to the world. This one article could clear clutter from your life, improve the quality of someone else’s and help save the planet from impending ecological annihilation. Well, you can’t accuse us of lacking ambition!
We’ve got ten inspirational ideas about what to do with all that old gear you’ve been squirrelling away. We want to help you get the maximum value from your purchases by re-purposing them in ways that can save you money. Why buy an external hard drive when a cheap caddy and screwdriver could turn your old laptop drive into the same thing for a fraction of the cost, for example?
We have information on how to donate your kit safely to people who are living in digital poverty, as well as opportunities to blow things up in your spare time. By the end, you’ll see that buying new isn’t always necessary, and as the environmental damage of most products is wreaked during the manufacturing process, we all need to find ways to re-use what we already own. Get ready to bring that pile of junk that you stub your toe on three times a week back from the dead.
1 REVIVE OLD PCs WITH CHROMEOS FLEX
It used to be obligatory within these sorts of features to advocate installing Linux onto an old machine, but at the risk of starting a riot, the quirks of penguin power are not for the faint-hearted. How about an intuitive lightweight OS, built by one of the world’s largest companies, that actually works?
ChromeOS Flex is Google’s latest freebie and can be easily installed onto PCs and Intel Macs, turning them into extremely capable Chromebook-like devices with access to Google Docs, Drive and all the Chrome extensions you could desire. What you don’t get is access to the Google Play Store, but in an increasingly browser-based world, this won’t be an issue for many users and you certainly shouldn’t see it as a barrier to this very capable
