In previous OSNews articles I’ve
claimed that discarded computers up to ten years old can be refurbished and made useful to someone. They shouldn’t be discarded. They should be refurbished — fixed up and reused — rather than recycled
— destroyed and separated into their constituent materials. So how does one do this? In this and several subsequent articles, I’ll describe how to revitalize older computers.
Background
Here’s how I got interested in this subject. I’ve been refurbishing computers, off and on, since the early 1990’s, back when I discovered you could upgrade a 286 to a 486, by replacing the motherboard, processor and memory. Back then reusing the other parts (case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, monitor, disks) was worthwhile because they were expensive.
I eventually started refurbishing computers for charity, both for non-profit organizations like
Free Geek Chicago
and on my own. It’s an unpaid hobby that is unrelated to my career as an independent database and operating systems consultant.
If you’d like to play too, just haul that old computer out of your attic or up from your basement and you’ll have fun making it useful again. Or if you don’t have one sitting around,ask friends, neighbors, or co-workers. It’s not obvious how to dispose ofcomputers properly, so many people store them away, where they slowly age into obsolescence. You can often getfree older computers from online sources like
FreeCycle,
FreeSharing,
Craigslistor these other
organizations. (I’ve even refurbished two P-III’s I found curbside in the alleys while
walking my dog!)
Most of these computers will be in the range of five to ten years old. This is my “target market” — a Pentium III or better. Many of the better donations will come your way because their owners don’t know that Windows needs to be
tuned up, just like their car. Instead they figure a slow Windows system is “justtoo old” and give it away. You’ll also get some good donations that have a single easily-fixed hardware failure, like a bad disk or broken CD. Many people feel it’s easier to toss out any aging computer with a hardware problem than to fix it.
My goal is to refurbish computers forthose who can’t afford new ones. This is important because about
one-quarter
of Americans do not own a computer. They have to trek to the public library or wait in line at school to use a shared one. Large families have to share computers among their kids. A secondary machine is very useful to them, even if it’s not state-of-the-art. If you’re in IT or the computer industry, please understand that many people would love to have your discarded five to ten year old computer (properly refurbished). You can find local refurbishers to donate your old computer to
here,
here,and
here.
Single Purpose Systems
My goal is to build general purpose systems. This differs from those who take older machines and repurpose them for a single function. By honing in on a singletask, you can make even computers with very limited resources useful. The kinds of tasks they can be used for include
routers,
firewalls,
print servers,
file servers, backup computers, word processors, and more. This
article
has acomplete list of fun single function projects.
One of my favorite dedicated uses for old computers isasinexpensive intelligent terminals connected to central servers. The PC’s manage presentation graphics while the central server runs the applications. You can even reuse Pentium II’s and Pentium I’s in this way. The
Linux Terminal Server Projectprovides free Linux software to implement this architecture.
Robert
Pogson
has writtendetailed
articles
on exactly how to do this and the technical parameters involved. He describes real-world use in the Canadian school system. He also details exactly where they have saved money versus what a traditional network of “fat client” personal computers would have cost. Given the clear cost-effectiveness of this approach I’m surprised we don’t see it employed more often.
What Good Are Older Computers?
Ever had a non-technical friend ask you: “which computer should I buy?” That’s a tough question to answer. It all depends on what they’re going to use it for and their expectations. And these can vary widely.
Refurbishing a computer presents the same dilemma. Its value all depends on:
- The tasks you want to perform
- Your performance expectations
Let me give you two extreme examples at opposite ends of the spectrum. I have one friend who is busy recapturing his youth by tricking out an ancient 486. With his hardware mods, he can do anything — play games from his teenage years, email, even web surfing and social networking. I greatly admire his technical ability. But his approach is impractical for most of us.
On the other end of the spectrum I know several IT professionals who look down on anything more than a year or two old. They enjoy working with cutting-edge systems and have the money to buy the latest equipment. I think that’s great, but they don’t realize that not everyone shares their values. Or their finances. Some people just want to perform everyday computer tasks. As long as performance is adequate they really don’t care about computer specs or whether their system is cutting edge. They do care how much the system cost.
What you consider worthwhile depends on your goals. My goal is to help everyday people with general purpose computers that would otherwise be prematurely discarded.
Five to ten year old computers can do the job. Just look at what you can do with
Puppy, a Linux distribution targeted at older and limited-resource machines:
-
Perform home and office tasks with word processors, file and HTML editors, PDF viewers, spreadsheets, and
HomeBank
finance manager - Surf the Internet, and read, write, send and manage email
- Play, record, mix, rip and manage music
- Scan in documents and pictures, read or scan photographs, alter and manage images and graphics with image and vector editors
-
Write your personal blog with
PPLOG
and the Hiawatha web server, or create your own wiki with
DidiWiki
-
Telephone, chat, or message via Voice Over IP with
Psip, and instant message and chat with
Ayttm
-
Manage your address book, personal contacts, and daily calendar with
Osmo
daily organizer - Read, write, and burn CD’s, DVD’s, and Blu-ray discs
- Log in to remote computers with telnet and send & receive files
- Manage your files and data with file managers, a file finder, and tools for backup
- Manage your computer and its performance with a full set of utilities for setup, configuration, and performance monitoring and management
Mature machines have their limitations.Their lesser performance becomesobvious during CPU- and disk- intensive tasks. Concurrency is zilch compared to today’s dual- and multi- core computers. You can’t run a virus-scanner or perform some other background task on an older machine and expect it not to interfere with your primary task. You might find that websites with big imagesor lots of active code will present screensslowly (though sometimes this depends more on your line speed and its consistency than computer performance). And smooth video might be an issue. Fluent video requiresroughly a one ghz CPU or better.
Mature machines can’t run current versions of Microsoft software like Windows and Office. Running Microsoft software on an older machine means running older versions of the software.
What You’ll Get — Hardware
Ok, let’s say you’ve got an older computer in hand. While machines vary by manufacturer, this chart describes their generalcharacteristics:
|
Pentium: |
Produced: |
Processor Speeds: |
Typical Memory: |
Maximum Memory: |
| I | 1993 to 1998 | 60 mhz to 300 mhz | 16 to 64 M | 128 M |
| II | 1997 to 1999 | 233 mhz to 450 mhz | 64 to 128 M | 256 M |
| III | 1999 to 2003 | 450 mhz to 1.4 ghz | 128 M to 512 M | 512 M to 1 G |
| IV | 2000 to 2008 | 1.3 ghz to 3.8 ghz |
256 M to 1 G |
1 or more gigabytes |
Sources:
Wikipedia,
Tom’s Hardware, personal experience. “Typical Memory” refers to how much memory you’ll typically encounter in donated computers. “Maximum Memory” is the hardware limit for the maximum allowable memory. Computersvary a bit in maximum memory by manufacturer; common maximums are listed.
Throughout this discussion I’ll assume that you have no prior knowledge of the computer you’re refurbishing. We’ll call this an “unknown computer” or a computer in an “unknown state” — a computer about which you can not make any assumptions. If you’re reviving a known computer from your own basement or attic you might be able to skip some of the steps I’ve listed.
With any older computer, it’s critical to first verify that the hardware works. Otherwise you can waste lots of time later, trying to fix mysterious errors you could have caught earlier.It’s analogous to finding a software error in the design phase rather than during programming. Testing hardware costs a little time up front but can save you so much morelater.
Boot into the computer’s hardware configuration panel (by pressing F1, F2, DEL, or whatever works for that computer). Check out the parameters and see if any errors are highlighted. Look to see if there’s a hardware error log to view. Be sure to run any diagnostics these panels offer!
You’ll also find the hardware specs on these panels. Does the old laptop have a mini-PC (wifi) card? What are the computer’s video memory and adapter type? What are the optical disc drive’s capabilities? Write down all hardware device information for later. You might need it during an operating system install or to locate drivers.
Your main testing and verification targets are the memory,disk,
and
motherboard. The configuration panels might help you to test them. If not,
Hiren’s Boot CD
comes with a full suite oftests.Live Linux CD’s likeUbuntu offer free memory testers like
memtest86. Any installed version of Windows offers a good disk checker in Chkdsk or Scan Disk.If you have to break the Windows Administrator account password to run them use the free programOffline NT Password and Registry Editor. It deletes the Administrator password so you can log on to the Administrator account without entering a password. Be sure to reset the Administrator password after you gain access!
The one hardware improvement that really counts with older computers is to maximizememory. For example,a Pentium III with 512 M can run almost any Linux distribution.128 M on that same machine severely restricts your options. You might find a 400 or 450 mhz P-IIofuse with 256 M but worthless withless. So always max out the memory. Get extra memory by cannibalizing other discarded or broken computers. Or you can find itinexpensively online or at computer shows.
ChoosingOperating System(s)
One might think that choosing an operating system is only a technical issue, but for mature computers, it’s one of the biggest decisions you’ll make. The OS determinesperformanceand the available applications.Itaffects licensing, security,ease of use,and other key factors.
I volunteer at
Free Geek Chicago, a non-profit refurbisher that combines computer donations with free and open source software to get computers to those who need them. Free Geek always destroys all software and data on thedisk(s) by running a program like
Darik’s Boot and Nuke
orDBAN. This assures those who donate their equipment that their data has been fully destroyed by overwriting the entire disk.
Reformatting a disk or installing an operating system do
not
adequately destroy data. Demagnetizing or degaussing the diskdestroys the data, but it also destroys the disk because it eliminates the tracking guidance mechanism. You can’t demagnetize a disk if you intend to reuse it.
After over-writing the disk completely with DBAN, Free Geek Chicago installs
Xubuntu
Linux. Xubuntu gives clients all the benefits of Ubuntu– wide popularity, a large user community, a huge repository of free applications, active online help forums — while running the light-weight XFCE graphical user interface.
Keeping Windows?
If you’re fixing up a computer for yourself, friends, or family, you’re in a different situation than an organization like Free Geek. You can weigh whether to keep the already-installed Windows software. Let’s detail some of the pro’s and con’s.
If the Windows version pre-dates XP — such as ME, 98, or 95 — I would not recommend youkeep the OS for general use. These older Windows versions suffer securityvulnerabilities. Microsoft no longer supports them or provides security fixes. Most anti-malware programs no longer run on pre-XP systems. And if you can get modern anti-malware running on them, it willdegrade performance, since these OS’s run on machines that are over ten years old. Finally, Windows systems pre-dating XP don’t offer user account security.
This recommendation applies only for general purpose, Internet-connected computing. You might still find special purpose or single use needs whereolder Windows systems fulfill your goals. My favorite example is my friend who writes romance novels for a living. She has a special “writing room” with an old Windows 98 computer running Word 2000. She doesn’t want to be Internet connected. She says that would distract her from her job, creative writing. She’s happy to have picked up a dirt-cheap refurbished computerrather than shelling out hundreds of dollars for a new one. She needs nothing more than she has, and what she has fits her needs perfectly.
Move up to Windows XP and deciding whether to keep Windows becomes a more interesting question. XP is in the
middle
of Microsoft’s de-support process. All applications and devices run with XP, and there is a wide array of excellent free anti-malware programs available. The software on the machine will be age-appropriate.(You can’t run current Microsoft software on your older computer.) The system willinclude all the necessary drivers. Keeping Windowsretainsall the installed applications, too. These could have high value, depending on your intended use. Finally, you’re keeping a premier operating system, with world-wide support forums, lots of onlineinformation and help, and tons of apps. You’ll getall the traditional Windows advantages — ease of use, compatibility, a high degree of applications integration, and more.
The one major downside is thatit takes a lot of effort and expertise to clean up a donated XP computer that arrives in an unknown state. This time-consuming process focuses on three key objectives, performed in this order:
- Security
- Anonymization
- Performance tuning
Security
means ensuring there is no malware or spyware on the computer. Because of
rootkits, you can never be theoretically certain that you have secured an unknown computer. But running a series of anti-malware and cleanup programs will protect you sufficiently to give adequate assurance fortypical computer use.
Be aware that for an unknown, donated computer you will have to run a number of anti-malware programs — preferrably in sequence — and that this requires significant run time. Running a single anti-malware program is
not
sufficient to assure that you have cleaned up an unknown computer. Anti-malware programshave
different strengths
and best identify
differentthreats.
No program has a 100%
detection rate!
Running several programs also helps you properly deal with the false positives thrown off by any one program.
Anonymization
is only necessary if the computer is not your own. You’ll probably want to wipe out any trace of the identity of the former owner and his or her activities. It’s usually easy to locate and over-write the previous owner’s data files and user accounts. But locating and eliminating all the personal data kept in the Registry, buried in application configuration files, and residing in application profiles can be difficult.
Complete anonymization also includes cleaning up all that “tracking data” Windows leaves lying around: cookies, flash cookies, temp files, internet temp files, download and install files, logs of all kinds, most-recently-used (MRU) lists for various applications, search autocomplete, Internet Explorer autocomplete, histories of several kinds, web cache, recently-typed URLs, all the web sites visited that are stored in the Index.dat files and sometimes the Registry, and more. Even with automated tools it’s tough to be sure you’ve found and erased absolutely everything. Most people consider it unnecessary to be this thorough but it’s good to be aware of all the “personal data and traces” we leave behind when using Windows.
Performance tuning
a donated computer requires time because people don’t usually donate computers that still meet their performance expectations. They donate computers they feel have become “too slow.” Most Windows users have no idea that they should tune up Windows periodically,so it’s common to get donations of perfectly good computers that just need some tuning to reclaim their spark.
You need to achieve four objectives in performance tuning:
- Reduce the processor load
-
Reduce memory use
- Reclaim disk space
- Ensure optimal use of the network connection
In next month’s article I’ll describe how to secure and anonymize donated Windows XP systems. This will be based on myfree guideHow To Secure Windows and Your Privacy. While the guide is two years old it still applies since we’re talking about reviving Windows XP systems. The month after that I’ll show how to performance-tune mature computers. This will be based on my new guide that covers
all
Windows versions,
How to Tune Up Windows.
Installing Windows Fresh
Another OS alternative is to install Windows fresh. Many believe you get better performing, cleaner systems by re-installing Windows rather than securing and cleaning up an existing install. This makes sense but it isn’t practical unless you have the original install disks.
For a fresh install, you have to have both the legal Windows license and the matching install disk. Plus you’ll lose the installed applications unless you have their original install disks, too. Finally, you have to be able to locate and re-install all the drivers. You can do this even if you don’t have the original “drivers CD” that came with the computer but it is time-consuming. You can find and freely download most Windows drivers from web sites like
NoDevice,
CNet Downloads, and
Soft32. There are also many web sites that will scan your computer and recommend the best drivers for your devices.
Some vendors offer proprietary systems whereby the disk has a “recovery partition” so that you can do some sort of “recovery re-install.” How this works and whether it will give you the full benefits of a true re-install depends on the particular vendor’s technology.
Refurbishing non-profits that install fresh copies of Windows are nearly always members of Microsoft’s Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher (MAR) and
Registered Refurbisher
programs. These programs offer reduced-fee Windows XP and Office licenses as well as install tools to organizations that conform to Microsoft’s program
requirements.
The goal is to reuse computersfive
years old or less. (By way of contrast, Linux-oriented refurbishers like
Free Geek
reuse computers up to ten years old.)
Multiple Operating Systems
Non-profit refurbishers like Free Geek must guarantee complete data destruction,so they completely over-write disks and cleanly install a new operating system. You may be in a different position. If you decide to keep Windows, you might try dual-booting. Couple XP and its installed apps with a fresh install of a suitable Linux. This gives you the best of both worlds, retaining everything Windows and the installed apps offer while pairing them with the benefits of open source software and free download repositories. There is a fair degree of interoperability between the Windows and Linux worlds these days, too. Linux can read and write files in Windows partitions and Linux applications like
OpenOffice
can work with Microsoft Office files. For dual-side applications compatibility you can install OpenOffice under Windows, too.
The major cost to dual-booting is your time, both for securing and cleaning up Windows, and also for installing Linux. Also,thecomputer must have sufficient disk space. You need about one gigabyte of free space to install a small Linux distro like Puppy and from four to eight gigabytes to install a full distro like Ubuntu.
If you decide to dual-boot WindowsXP and Linux, you’ll need two key tools:
- Dual-boot manager
- Partitioning tool
The former installs on the disk’s master boot record or
MBR
and presents the operating system selection menu upon system start. This is where you select whether to use Windows or Linux for your session. The latter enables you to add the Linux partition to the disk andresize the existing XP partition (usually necessary to co-install Linux). Both tools come bundled with most Linux general-purpose distributions. Puppy and Ubuntu are two examples. Linux gives you everything you need to set up a dual-boot system with Windows XP.
Of course, there are other ways to run more than one operating system on a single computer besides dual-booting. Booting “live CDs,” USB booting, and virtual machine software come to mind. Even if you elect to install Linux to disk you’ll face choices such as “full” versus “frugal” installs. There is a wide range of options and this is an important issue in computer refurbishing. I’ll discuss the options in detail in a future article.
Dare I offer my own preferences forLinux distros? (Everyone knows there are dozens of excellent distros one could choose). I value systems that are widely used,offer active online communities, are user friendly, andrequire minimal tweaking after installation. Here is what I prefer:
|
Pentium: |
Recommendation for Low-Memory Systems: |
Recommendation for High-Memory Systems: |
| I |
Damn Small Linux |
Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux |
|
II |
Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux |
Puppy Linux |
|
III |
Puppy Linux |
Any (Ubuntu) |
|
IV |
Any (Ubuntu) | Any (Ubuntu) |
I only give P-III’s and better to end users. As long as a techie initially installs and configures them, I find that Puppy, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu offer sufficient ease of use for anyone. So these are the three systems I give to clients.
Witha Pentium III and 512 M, youcan install any Linux distro,even large-sized systems like Ubuntu, CentOS, Red Hat, or PCLinuxOS. Ubuntu fits my criteria and so I’ve always used it in the past. But the five P-III systems on which I’ve tried to install the latest Ubuntu release, 10.04, have all failed. I’ve had success with two of three P-IV systems. In all cases, the new video didn’twork out-of-the-boxand fixing it has becomemore complicated than simply editing the now-missing
xorg.conf
file. I am concerned but have not yet completed testing, and am now trying some different boot options. Myimpression thus far isthat Ubuntu is leaving older systems behind. If this turns out to be true, perhaps I’ll have better luck with other members of the Ubuntu family, such as Xubuntu or the newly-emergent
Lubuntu. Lubuntu focuses on older systems and requires
minimal
system resources. Or I might turn toother full distros about whichend users have given me very positive feedback, such as
Vector
and
Wolvix.
More OS Options
There are other interesting free systems to try besides Linux.I won’t discuss them here, so perhaps readers can add comments and sharetheir experiences on how they’ve used them:
|
Operating System: |
Best Use: |
|
BSD |
BSD is noted both for its rock-solid reliability and minimal system requirements. Check out FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. |
|
Haiku |
A new OS that has receivedattention at OS News, Haiku was inspired by BeOS. Although Haiku can run on less, a P-III with 256M is recommended. |
|
FreeDos |
For old DOS-era machines, FreeDOS gives you a modern, open source system. FreeDOS brings DOS into modernity by supplying many “packages” that supportmodern devices and features. |
Coming Up …
Obviously there are
many
different ways to refurbish computers. This article offers only a single perspective. Please add a comment sharing your own ideas and what has worked for you. What has been your experience?
Next month I’ll describe how to revitalize Windows XP systems. I’ll focus on two main areas: security and anonymization. Then in the article after that I’ll discuss how to performance tune mature Windows systems.
When I was in high school, I remember how enthusiastic some friends were about rebuilding old cars. I never caught the “car bug” but I appreciated their goal. Few people think of computers this way, even when they have years of good service left in them.
Nothing is more satisfying than taking a computer someone has discarded as worthless, fixing it up and tuning it back to life, then getting it to someone who really needs it. It’s not hard if you know how.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who specializes in databases and operating systems. He’s refurbished computers as a hobby for over fifteen years.
Resources
|
Smart Reuse with Open Source |
How refurbishing defeats planned obsolescence |
|
How To Secure Windows and Your Privacy |
Free comprehensive e-book tells how to secure Windows (July 2008) |
|
How to Tune Up Windows |
E-book tells how to performance tune Windows (March 2010) |
|
Goodbye Microsoft |
Good information on how to revive older computers with Linux |
|
Upgrading and Repairing PC’s |
The standard hardware reference book. If you’re working with older equipment you don’t have to have the latest edition. |
|
The Complete PC Upgrade & Maintenance Guide |
The other standard hardware reference book |
|
Free Geek |
A non-profit charity that refurbishes computers and recycles unuable parts |
|
Electronics Take Back Coalition |
Background on reuse and recycling |
|
Microsoft Refurbisher Program |
How Microsoft’s refurbisher programs work |
It is noice (like nice but betterer) to see a return to the fundamentals here. I feel that it is important to explain why we, as a tech community might want to boot a desktop/ laptop into something other than the OS that was shipped with it. I know I have an old thinkpad and wayyy to many old Macintoshes that would love a get refreshed into a basic low fat debian install.
-=- So for real thanks maybe this will get some of the new-blood pumping. Maybe some girl out there will take that ‘Old’ P4 – P3 and instead of ‘just using it’ will learn that there is more out there than what you were promised
just my $00.02
BeOS works quite nicely on anything under Pentium 4. It’s also super-easy to install – if you’ve already got it on a hard drive. Just connect another drive, initialize and run the Installer and it’ll create a complete bootable copy of the original – including all installed applications. You can even copy the whole OS manually if you don’t want to use the installer. I do it all the time and swap drives in and out, from computer to computer without problems. Unlike Linux, you don’t have annoying hassles with crap like GRUB.
Technically, BeOS will run with only 32Mb, but for Firefox and VLC to work properly, you should have at least 96Mb.
I’m posting this from a PC with a Pentium 3 running Haiku. It runs fine and boots very fast. Haiku is very friendly with older PCs.
One trick I use to get extra performance out of older PCs is to use a disk controller card. You can add UIDE 133 or even SATA capabilities to an old PC. Faster disk access = faster PC!
I’ve found Haiku to be a bit unstable compared to BeOS – and it doesn’t support many of the sound & network cards you’ll find in older discarded computers (at least most of the computers I’ve tried it with). I’m hoping Haiku improves, but I don’t expect them to start supporting old cards. They’re (rightly) too busy trying to support newer hardware.
I’m posting this with BeOS on Pentium III. I also have Linux on another drive that I plug in occasionally when I want to rip CDs or view embedded flash. BeOS is my main OS though. It’s WAY more fun to use on this computer than Linux.
Another great thing about BeOS (and Haiku) – you can create a complete bootable installation (with Firefox, VLC, graphics editor, music player, etc.) using as little as 300Mb disk space.
Edited 2010-08-04 20:00 UTC
Is it Flash working for you?
Embedded Flash doesn’t work, but with addons like VideoDownloadHelper, it was possible to download YouTube videos (flv or mp4 format) and view them in VLC without problems. (don’t know why it couldn’t help with embedded videos in other pages… not a very helpful “helper”)
Unfortunately, just a couple weeks ago, YouTube made some changes and now that doesn’t work properly.
“Progress” is constantly screwing the user of older computers.
Edited 2010-08-06 16:04 UTC
Somehow I doubt that old PCs are able to play H.264 video easily..
Usually CPU or graphics capabilities aren’t the limiting factors if the computer is only used for web browsing, word processing etc. light tasks. A decade old PC can even be used for managing one’s own photo albums just fine. The limiting factors are usually memory, connectivity and disk space, but all these three are actually quite easy to overcome.
Old memory can often be salvaged from non-functional computers or found eBay or such, usually pretty cheap.
Connectivity limitations can very easily be remedied by a USB2 add-on card, some of them sport even as many as 10 ports. And they too are really cheap nowadays.
Disk space.. Well, even pretty old motherboards sport ATA133-compatible chips so it should be fairly easy to just replace the old disk, and if there’s any snags just go grab again one add-on card, either S-ATA one or a ATA133 one.
If you’re installing Linux and happen to have a selection of older graphics cards to choose from then it’s best to choose one with open-source drivers and basic 3D rendering capabilities; Compiz can really make the desktop and windows feel pretty snappy even with a low-speed CPU. I myself happen to have 5 or 6 old Radeons with R200 or RV250 chips and those are extremely good for these things, the open-source drivers got full EXA acceleration and Compiz works like a dream with them. It really makes a big difference.
But the most important thing to remember if you furbish an old computer and donate/sell it forth: explain CLEARLY the computer’s limitations and that it’s not f.ex. suitable for any kind of gaming, video processing etc. You’ll save yourself a lot of trouble and the receiving end from a disappointment if you are clear enough as to the capabilities of the computer.
I’m not sure web browsing is generally such a light task these days. Sometimes my modern PC bogs down on flash/media heavy sites, and many of them aren’t usable with that stuff turned off.
Even if you avoid the worst performing sites, modern web browsers themselves aren’t typically lightweight and efficient applications, and using an old browser is a big security risk. Opera’s promoted for its speed and efficiency, but recent versions still aren’t much fun on a system with less than 1Gb RAM.
I’m not sure web browsing is generally such a light task these days. Sometimes my modern PC bogs down on flash/media heavy sites, and many of them aren’t usable with that stuff turned off.
Well, true that. Should have used the wording “light web browsing” instead. There’s one good thing brewing regarding Flash: Lightspark ( http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/lightspark ) is a modern Flash-reimplementation and uses GLSL for all its rendering and as such it should be quite a bit faster than even the official client. A few years from now it’ll be really hard to find even old, used graphics cards without GLSL-support and then Lightspark can probably be used to give yet again a small speed-boost.
I applaud the sentiment, and do this quite a bit myself; I have rescued many a dumped computer which only required a minimum amount of troubleshooting to make usable again.
I once had the opportunity to take on this sort of role as a voluntary effort/hobby on a permanent basis when I managed to make a deal with a university department; it was cheaper for them to route them through me, and I could supply people on demand, as and when.
However, if you supply a machine, the person receiving it invariably sees you as the LTS person; you get contacted again and again about the least thing. I stopped doing this, not because I had no time to refurbish and make good the older but serviceable kit that came my way but because I was quickly overwhelmed by demands for help once it had been handed over.
It doesn’t matter *how* clear you are about expectation: the less things cost, the more people are free with it, weirdly.
Perhaps I was just unlucky, and I do not want to appear overly cynical but supplier beware :-)!
However, if you supply a machine, the person receiving it invariably sees you as the LTS person; you get contacted again and again about the least thing. I stopped doing this, not because I had no time to refurbish and make good the older but serviceable kit that came my way but because I was quickly overwhelmed by demands for help once it had been handed over.
…
Perhaps I was just unlucky, and I do not want to appear overly cynical but supplier beware :-)!
That is not cynical at all. It shadows my experiences pretty well. Be it hardware or an alternative OS. Once you are the one who got the other party to take it, you become the defacto 24/7/365 helpdesk.
When it is second hand hardware, people still treat you as a manufacturer and somehow expect some kind of warranty. When it is an alternative OS, people expect you to hold their hands and practically do every bit of trivial stuff, harder than clicking a button, for them.
If that sort of role isn’t your ultimate passion, you’re better off not doing it.
Old computers are less energy efficient. Probably it’s economically wiser in the long term to buy _current_ not very powerful hardware than to resort to old stuff that consumes a lot of power for its mediocre performance…
This is true, and a similar situation was discussed in a Slashdot post a week or so ago regarding an unused G5 tower. The overwhelming sentiment in the comments was to sell it and use the money to buy a couple of new, energy efficient mini-PCs (or an older Intel Mac mini if OS X was a requirement).
That being said, I’ve found that some of the PIII/PIV era microATX based systems by Compaq and Acer were fairly conservative in electricity requirements even compared to modern systems. For example, I’m running this Core2Duo system with the smallest possible power supply (400 watts) and it comes close to being too little power. In contrast, a PIII Compaq Deskpro I recently refurbished for a friend uses a power supply rated at 180 watts max, and as she just uses it for writing and light, text-based web browsing (i.e. mostly idle even when in use) it’s probably using no more than half of that.
Have you actually measured its power consumption?
I can’t imagine a Core2Duo system drawing that much power unless it has a high end and inefficient graphics card.
My 2.8Ghz Athlon X2 media centre draws under 40W idle and around 65W under full onboard graphics/CPU load. It uses a 130W fanless PSU without any problems.
The PIII might well use a bit less, but not enough to put a dent in an electricity bill.
Sorry, I should have mentioned I am using a fairly inefficient nVidia card (I’d prefer ATI for several reasons but I want to maintain easy Hackintosh compatibility) and several drives. Also keep in mind the 400W rating for the power supply is a max load rating. It actually is meant for no more than about 230-250W steady use, which I estimate (based on my components’ stated power requirements) is right about what I’m using.
I’m seriously considering a trade to a friend with a Mac mini as he is wanting an OS X compatible, yet highly expandable system and he can’t afford a Mac Pro. Mine doesn’t quite have the power and speed of even the early Mac Pros, but it makes up for that with extreme expandability (eight 3.5in drive bays, five optical drive bays, full ATX mobo with SATA-RAID, UDMA and four RAM slots, and a nearly tool-free case). I’m wanting a true Mac, and his Core Duo mini is upgradeable all the way around, minus the video card of course.
Old computers are less energy efficient. Probably it’s economically wiser in the long term to buy _current_ not very powerful hardware than to resort to old stuff that consumes a lot of power for its mediocre performance…
When looking at it from a “this is my wallet” perspective, that might be true. But is it still true when looking at the energy and resources bill of the overall lifetime of a machine? Is continually scrapping/recycling and using a new machine better than just using a slightly older and less energy efficient machine longer?
Put another way, is the process of rapidly and continuously scrapping/recycling and reproducing a machine equal or less taxing on the environment than using an older less energy efficient machine? Is the waste of energy by using an older machine enough of an offset to justify scrapping/recycling the old one and producing a new machine?
I consciously say scrapping/recycling here, because selling that machine does not prevent energy waste. The buyer most probably won’t use it as a doorstop.
I would like to see the numbers on that … how long is the “long term” before we start to realize the benefit.
I would be shocked if it was within the typical 1 year warranty period for a new system.
In addition to the simple intersection of when:
refurb cost + power = new cost + power
you have to consider:
1. the time-preference of money (I might prefer to – or have to – spend less money now even if it costs more in the long run)
2. the risk of the new computer failing after the warranty period has elapsed and before it has become a savings
It is true the new computer would offer better performance than the old, but if the old provides what you need … that’s kind of the point here, isn’t it, that for some people’s computer usage (probably not yours, and definitely not mine), a 5 to 10 year old computer will do the trick.
My impression is that many of today’s desktop gaming PCs sport the newer nVidia and ATI video cards that eat up a lot of watts; whereas the old PCI cards are thrifty by comparison.
We have a 1996-era FIC PA-2002 PC with an AMD 90MHz K5. I’ve since gotten an Asus TUV4X in 2001 with a 1GHz Celeron which I share with my mom. I refurbish the FIC in stages: adding a Kingston Turbochip 400, followed by a AcceleraPCI (both via eBay) that will sport the Celeron once the Pentium III 1.4GHz I ordered for the Asus arrives. I maxed the memory to 128MB. WinXP runs well enough that my mom can use it for her own needs once I’m done. It doesn’t need a 300+ watt power supply, and I’d guess the power consumption should be reasonable.
Edited 2010-08-06 14:37 UTC
Yes older computers are generally less efficient. However on an absolute level, older processors consume less power.
I have a dual PII system with 512mb ram…. based on the 440LX chipset so yeah some PII systems do have the ability to handle more ram I have heard of some with as much as 2Gb
Assuming you have an AGP system some of the radeon R300 cards will work as well you just have to be carefull that it supports the same voltages your motherboard supports.
I have ran both Haiku and BeOS on this system and they both work well BeOS is even capable of playing DVDs well even at 2x300Mhz Haiku should once DVD support has been added.
Noone mentioned DeliLinux… or Slitaz personally I find the latter more intresting DSL comletely lost any respect I had for it with all the drama it has generated in the past few years.
Puppylinux is not stable and support is non existant unless you want to fix things yourself also it runs as root normally.
The reason I find slitaz interesting is they lean heavily on scripted apps like Puppylinux but also have nice repositories and support they also have support for booting on PCs with as little as 16Mb though I doubt X11 would work well unless swap was enabled. Personally I would rather see Slitaz with a rox desktop instead of PCmanfm as it is getting more bloated with “features”
Edited 2010-08-04 21:53 UTC
Don’t forget Tiny Core Linux; I’ve found it snappy and useful even on a low-end PII with 128MB. It has a great repository and you can even use it to build software (all basic build dependencies, gcc, make, glibs etc. are available). The ISO is only 10MB and installs easily, and it even has support for wireless chipsets. I used it briefly on my wife’s laptop — a four-year-old Presario with only 512MB — until the replacement Windows restore discs arrived from HP; she found it to be useful and “cute”, though it had to go so she could feed her Windows-only Hidden Object Game addiction.
It’s become my new favorite ultra-low-end Linux LiveCD, and has a permanent place in my geek toolbox.
I recently discovered Tiny Core my self and it’s great! The boot up speed is fantastic. To install it all you copy over is two files. I’m thinking of making this my own ‘Splashtop’ type distro for when I just need a browser to quickly check something and don’t want to wait for my main OS to boot up.
Awesome article, but there’s one thing I’m a bit concerned about.
On old versions of Windows, 90% of browser exploits can probably be stopped by Noscript and a bit of knowledge; most remote exploits can be halted by adding a light firewall and disabling stuff like file and printer sharing. That’s my understanding anyway.
However, the recent icon loading vulnerability in Windows 2000 and up (exploited by Sality.AT, among other nasties) means that, if you plug in an infected USB stick, you can get infected with no interaction – even if autorun is disabled.
This is patched for XP SP3 and on, but for Windows 2000 there’s no update.
What’s the best way to deal with this on machines running unsupported operating systems?
(Edit: I’m assuming for Pentium II and early Pentium III era computers, which can run Win2k but not a modern antivirus.)
Edited 2010-08-04 22:53 UTC
Fantastic article! This is the kind of material we need to see more of, on OSnews, not article after article being recycled from ARS Technica.
Thank you.
You can go batshit insane like me and start with a dual 1.4ghz PIII tualatin-s motherboard and cpu a friend gives you and add 1.5gb pc133 ram (max board handles), an ati 4650 1gb agp video card, 450w ocz psu, cheap case, pci sata raid card with 256mb cache, four 1tb fujitsu F3 sata drives, ide ssd boot drive, ide dvd burner, pci physx ppu, a good i-forgot-the-make/model pci sound card, and a pci 3com 3c905 NIC.
I JUST recently tore that apart and parted out most of it to a new machine I finally built. Still have base machine up and running. Anyways, in the config I could play a ton of newer games at decent settings without too much problem. It ran windows 7 perfectly fine and dual booted with ubuntu 10.04.
I think I had about $500 tied up in it and that was mostly for the storage system. At the time I needed storage space over raw performance and the tualatins handled everything I wanted just fine. If I hadn’t scored a c2q 9550 for dirt I’d still be using it daily.
So that example is a bit extreme, but it still drives a point home. If you try, you can beef up an older machine for very little money ($50-100) and it’ll be usable for basic interneting and maybe even light gaming for someone. I still clean up PIII and PIV boxes and give them away all the time. It still amazes me at what people will give me or throw away because it was “old” or “slow”. I’ve started getting core duo era boxes for free. *shakes head*
iliks: While newer hardware may be much more power efficient, buying new means throwing away the old and wasting all the energy used in making the new. That amount of energy and raw materials FAR outweigh any savings you may get from lower power requirements.
Older machines can be used for lots of things. Home automation, development servers, file servers, digital picture frames. Considering the hardware in most electronics is less that a PIII, you can do just about anything with it. Old laptops are especially cool as they are quiet and small.
I’ve worked doing volunteer work for a place that gets those computers to people. It has to be at least a pentium 4, otherwise it’s being stripped for parts, electrical components, raw metals, etc… They’ll only be giving out computers with Windows XP or newer, since these people don’t have internet and no training with computers and anything else would extremely limit what they could do (Translation: Linux will never be on these machines). The Macs that get donated are always far too old to do anything with so they’ll go to the scrap piles as well.
Summary: If your old computer doesn’t have at least a Pentium 4 and a windows OEM sticker, it’s going to the scrap piles.
The main problem I’ve run into with older computers is flash. With enough memory almost everything will run fine except that bloated piece of crap.
Old computers are great as file servers, as they don’t consume much electricity.. but they have a really ugly problem: Newer disk driver just don’t work..
Try fitting a 40gb (already pretty old by today standards) into a Pentium I. A BIOS for a computer like that won’t even recognize it..
The BIOS should be no problem if you want to use big disk drives. Create a small boot partition. Install Linux. (Linux bypasses the BIOS to get disk information, while Windows depends on the BIOS.)
Exactly, or as others have suggested (including the article itself) use a PCI IDE card and you can have several large drives on a P1.
Android might be interesting if
– your user already has an andriod phone
– the computer will be used for simple tasks only
check:
http://www.android-x86.org/hardware-list
Otherwise, i think the various small linux distributions and haiku/beos are very interesting.
Windows XP SP3 (stripped down to the bare minimum) might work as well, although “stripping to the minimum” in an higher art, and keeping the system clean even more so. But it will give much compatibility with existing hard- and software, like being able to play Age of Empires 🙂
yes, stripping down XP yourself can be a fine art… which is why I leave to the artist eXPerience, whose oeuvre includes MicroXP & TinyXP.
I know those are pirated, but I use them on computers that came legitimately with XP: using TinyXP just saves me so much trouble compared to stripping legit XP down myself.
And the performance benefits are spectacular: it makes you wonder why the Microsoft didn’t do this themselves.
Microsoft is not in the business of making computers faster, quite the opposite. They have a nominally-secret deal with OEMs to keep people buying new hardware and not just new OSes.
Cool article. Which reminds me: some time ago I got for free the computer I wanted as a kid: a 100 MHz Pentium (the original Pentium) 🙂
Lately, however, I keep coming across old laptops with hardware problems. I might be able to change the hard disks, but it’s usually something completely different. And since there doesn’t seem to be a standard for laptop parts, I have no clue what to do with them… Any ideas?
Just to clarify, I’m talking about the “2-3 years out of warranty” kind of old laptops…
Edited 2010-08-05 09:24 UTC
Laptops from that era are generally not too expensive to fix, and offer a decent return on investment. The Presario laptop my wife uses (mentioned in another post here) was rebuilt from scratch by me for about $115 out of pocket. The laptop was given to me by a friend to fix for myself or part out when it developed video issues and would rarely boot. I took it apart and found the main logic board had a burnt out capacitor and the video cable was damaged in the hinge. This was still a useful laptop spec-wise — Turion64 1.6GHz with ATI 3D graphics — so I decided to refurbish it for my wife, who had been asking for a laptop so she wouldn’t be tied to the desk when gaming or browsing the web.
After scrounging around the ‘net, I found a certified used logic board for $80, a new video cable for $15 and the original restore discs from HP for $16. Fortunately for me, HP made this laptop easy to work on; once the parts were in it was a matter of about an hour to put it all back together and test using Tiny Core Linux.
That was about four months ago, and it’s happily purring along to this day. Instead of spending $500 on a new basic laptop with underpowered video, my wife now has a nice little computer with a multi-card reader, new enough to easily upgrade RAM and HDD, yet powerful enough to do the light gaming she enjoys.
I’ve been recycling old PCs for years, about half my friends have needed a computer at one point or another and garbage picked PCs, cleaned up with a little extra ram shoved in (if I have the right kind lying around) and Linux installed is a great way to help out folks who have limited funds and need to get online. You’ve put a lot more thought into it then I ever did, I think I shall book mark this page for future reference.
As a small computer repair shop, I often do similar things on a small scale, for profit. Of course I also help my customers keep their old computers running well enough to do the job. There are a few points I’d like to make.
Test the hard disk. They tend to last 3-8 years. In my experience, disks from 2000-2005 had the shortest lifespans. Some old disks from the 90s are still chugging along just fine.
Look at the motherboard. Check out the capacitors. If any of them are leaking a brown/orange gook, then forget it, or find somebody who is good with a soldering iron. Many old computers, again from 2000-2005, had terrible capacitors. Just ask Dell about their lawsuits.
As for power use, its true that new computers are much more efficient than those of a few years ago, but the older ones aren’t so bad. Computers from the Pentium IV era are power pigs, but Pentium III’s and II’s are much better. Also, if the end user needs to save money and power, get them to turn the stupid box off now and then. Use suspend to disk to reduce the boot time.
Mark
For 99% of people a nice PII with a high-ish amount of ram is all the computer they need. The only caveats these days are (1) video playback (web streaming) and (2) other web. Modern browsers chew through ram and cpu at astonishing rates! If you can work around or mitigate these two then most non-enthusiasts and non-professionals, e.g. people who don’t render video or use photoshop, will be just fine with a PII-era CPU.
But modern disks help.
Most of the “normal” computer users I know edit their holiday snaps to put up on Facebook, deal with modern file formats requiring up to date applications, play the odd game, or use their PC for playing music/video.
Even just using the thing as a word processor, they’d have issues if they needed to work with documents created by other people. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to run a recent version of MS Office or OpenOffice on a PII, not even just to fill out an application form.
Most people don’t need a quad core monster, but pretty basic and everyday use (with the modern internet and applications) is beyond a computer made in the last century.
Recent versions of MS Office–and OpenOffice–are lots of “more” but not lots of “more features people actually want and use.” You can be perfectly functional if you’re careful about your application selection.
I did mention web-stuff as one area of concern. Camera and photo stuff does not require any significant amount of CPU, even at fairly high resolutions.
Only if you don’t need to work with files from other people. Even things like online job application forms tend to come in a recent MS Word format, and sometimes they won’t even open properly in OpenOffice, let alone an old or lightweight application. Forget about taking documents backwards and forwards between work and home if you can’t run the same applications at each end.
Of course the old computer is fine if you don’t have those issues, but I think for the majority of users sticking with older software and hardware is more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have at least one application or favourite website that’d crawl on a 10+ year old PC.
heya,
While I applaud the sentiments, and I think it’s an awesome showcase of Linux/BeOS/Haiku/QNX’s abilities that they can run on older hardware, I’d question whether you’d actually use such a system for any real work, outside of the “cool” factor.
Second the comment by iliks above, many of these older systems have terrible power envelopes. Low-power consumption is a hot topic (sorry, couldn’t resist *grins*) these days, and it’s not hard to get a inexpensive, low-power system off the shelf.
For example, as this post on Slashdot showed:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/2314248/What-To-Do-With-an-O…
the general consensus seemed to be to just dump it, and buy a new system.
Heck, if you’re not wedded to the x86 platform, something like the Arudino or an ARM system might fit your needs better.
And in response to TechGeek’s point above, about the energy in the construction of the old system, that energy’s already been expended, and there’s nothing you can do to get it back. You may as well donate it to recycling, so that at least the materials don’t get wasted.
Manufacturing processes have improved to the point where it’s often now worth it to use this old hardware. You simply can’t match the experience on newer hardware – low-end hardware by today’s standards often blows the top-of-the-line older stuff away, and there’s new standards or stuff that you simply can’t get working on the old stuff (e.g. USB).
And look, a small form-factor system like the Arduino, is simply going to blow away an old hulking P3 tower – less noise, less heat, less power consumption, and just a smarter system overall.
It’s the same reason that I often shake my head at people who drive really old cars (I’m talking carburetor days), in the ignorant belief they’re being “better” for the environment. Sure, you need energy/materials for the new car, but you’re actually polluting a lot less by using a new, small form-factor car, with EFI, catalytic converters, unleaded petrol etc.
For example, new PCs have to follow things like RoHS regulations.
Second point – if you’re on older hardware, while the open-source’s community is quite good with maintaining patches for older branches, you’re still often more vulnerable to exploits, particularly web-based ones.
So while it’s definitely a “cool, it runs” things, e.g.:
http://www.vandenbrande.com/wp/2009/06/breadbox64-a-twitter-client-…
I doubt you’d actually want to use it day to day, or for real work.
Cheers,
Victor
Edited 2010-08-06 01:32 UTC
You have a point.
Low end laptops from trusted makers are the prime candidates for reuse as servers or routers because they should consume reasonable amounts of power and have long lives. If you plug them to a monitor and a keyboard, they can live far longer than the crappy LCD and membrane stuff they come with and possibly work well as word processors too. The problem is that laptop parts are hard to come by. So any malfunction in important devices means that you need another laptop.
High end laptops and old desktops, high end or not, are however not worth the bother. They waste power, overheat and die soon.
Nice to see someone focusing on reducing landfill too. I would love to be involved in any way.
Hardware has become exponentially powerful in the last few years, but software has exceeded in its ability to hog resources to perform the same basic tasks.
granted browsers are more secure, but they’re much slower. Word processing is a beast I cannot fathom why it’s bloated without adding any new features.
I have tried Zenwalk Linux and Vector Linux in addition to Xubuntu, with some good results on old hardware.
the title made the article seem about mature 40+ vagina actually which is weird.
It hasn’t been mentioned here.
But the weight and bulk of an old desktop PC is a problem for the elderly and disabled. You’ll be doing them no favors by donating that behemoth 50 lb Dell you’ve been keeping down in the basement.
The article mentions that you should run certain utilities, in a certain order, if you’re cleaning up an XP machine. It does not appear to give a link to this information. What are the utilities, and what order should they run in?
I have a relative that wants me to “fix” their virus-riddle XP machine. They do not want me to replace XP with linux (what I would do if they were giving it to me).
It is a P4. They’ve also “lost” the intall/recovery CD, so I can’t reinstall it (what I would like to do, since I am not installing linux).
I would like to clean it up, if possible. I know I used to use AVG and Avast, as well as an Avast root-kit package. I was curious to see if the list contains newer utilities I am not aware of. Thanks!