That old laptop gathering dust in the corner has plenty of life left in it yet. Windows may have moved on, but you’ll be surprised just how much you can still do with it. The same is true of your old smartphone and tablet too. Official support may be a thing of the past, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be kept updated and secure while it continues to serve a new purpose in your home.
The built-in obsolescence in tech is staggeringly wasteful. Not everyone needs—never mind wants—to upgrade every year or so, and unless you’re ruthlessly organized, it’s easy to accumulate a pile of supposedly redundant tech that, with just a bit of thought, can continue to serve your needs for many a year yet.
In this feature, we tasked ourselves with finding new uses for the laptops and mobile devices currently sitting unloved in the corner. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results: a 12-year-old laptop has a new life as a sleek and responsive Chromebook, a 2013-vintage Nexus tablet is now running Linux apps, while an eight-year-old smartphone is happily running a fully patched and updated version of Android 11. Read on for some inspiration as to how you can breathe new life into your old kit.
LET’S START WITH that neglected laptop. First of all, examine what upgrade options are available: you can do a lot more with 4GB than 2GB (and even more with 8GB or 16GB), so visit www.crucial.com and use its memory finder tool to see how much an upgrade will cost you. While you’re at it, pop open your laptop’s drive cover and consider upgrading it to an SSD if you haven’t already done so.
Both upgrades will ensure your laptop is not just more responsive, but better suited to a wider range of alternative uses. Depending on your laptop’s age and spec, you might be able to press it into service as a dedicated games server. Note: games servers are best employed for smaller groups of people, ideally on the same local network, but if you have a superfast broadband connection, then you should be able to host smaller groups of people remotely too.
