Do you have an old computer or laptop lying around and you don’t use it anymore but still don’t want to throw it away. Or maybe you bought one for a thousand bucks recently and realize your older laptop has become too old-fashioned or doesn’t suit your needs. In both situations, your old laptop is going to occupy some space in your drawer and add up to e-junk.
Most people do not know what to do with their old laptops, computers, and other devices. Certainly, they have bought them for a huge amount of money, they would not want to throw them away anyway. What they need to know is even a decade-old laptop has some value, all you have to unearth it. Even if a laptop is almost defunct with a dead battery or a broken screen, you can dig out some value from it by repurposing or selling it online.
Laptops are useful things during their working life, but if they break or just get too slow to do anything productive, what can you do with them? Well, if it’s the latter situation and it’s just too old and too slow to do any real work on there are still some very useful cases that you can put them to.
So let’s get creative and find out some really useful ways to repurpose your old laptop.
How to Make Most of Your Old Laptop
source: pinterest.com
There are many ways you can make most of the hidden values associated with your old laptop – you can resell it, you can repurpose it, and you can donate it to underprivileged people. Even if you have a dead computer or laptop lying around the corner, there are many useful things you can make out of these dead devices as there are so many still useful components and materials inside waiting to be repurposed.
Repurposing your old laptop for a different application
If your old laptop still has some life within it and it works (or some of its parts work) fine, you can repurpose your old machine for a variety of uses. There are many ways you can make use of the functioning parts, and most of them are pretty easy. There are many articles and YouTube tutorials available on this topic, which can tell you how to use these old devices. For Instance,
- Using your old laptop as a second monitor: If your screen is still working, instead of dismantling it you can use it as a standard independent computer monitor. You can turn your new laptop into a dual-screen workstation setup allowing for increased productivity and improved ergonomics with the help of this old laptop’s screen. You can even use this screen to cast a mirror view of your android phone to watch movies.
- Use it as a data storage device: If the hard drive in your old laptop is still healthy, you can use it as a secondary storage device. Not all the data on your laptop is always useful that you would want to keep handy. Those movies, music videos, and other data that you rarely use can be stored in that old laptop to make some decent space in your new laptop. You can also use this HDD in your old laptop as a portable storage device by plugging it into an external USB enclosure.
- Use your old laptop as a security camera setup: What do you need to monitor your surroundings or for a surveillance setup? A camera, a screen, and a storage space to keep the history of your video recordings – an old laptop has all these lying useless. There are many applications and software which can turn your old laptop into a CCTV setup. You can either use a secondary webcam to connect as a CCTV camera or you can DIY your laptop’s inbuilt camera for this purpose. The inbuilt camera is pretty tiny and unobtrusive yet powerful and can act as a hidden camera in the shady corners of your house.
Make some amazing and useful gadgets by repurposing your old laptop
source: digitaltrends.com
There are many tiny but very useful components hidden inside your laptops that can be repurposed to create different DIY projects, gifts, or actually productive gadgets in your home. For instance,
- Make a Bluetooth stereo with your old laptop’s speakers: Most of the older laptops had pretty good speakers and some even featured mini subwoofers. As they’re usually built into their own sealed enclosures you don’t need to build a speaker box for them. It could be mounted directly onto a wall as a laptop’s Bluetooth can be wirelessly connected to a phone or tablet and used to listen to music.
- Use your laptop’s screen panel as a decorative light: Laptop screens are worth salvaging even if they’re defunct or smashed because when the LCD layer is removed you’re left with a variety of potentially useful diffusion sheets and an acrylic back panel. These work together to spread out the backlight evenly and to take advantage of them you can use these with a soft diffused light source to create a fake window or decorative digital painting. You could even print your favorite pictures onto thin sheets and have them now backlit for some striking wall art.
- Make a lavalier microphone with your laptop’s mic: You must have wondered about the efficiency and noise cancelation of your old laptop’s inbuilt microphone and how that works pretty well even when you speak from a distance. Well, these microphones are built in a way that they use minimum space and work efficiently in such a small case. You can use this mic to clip onto your headphones and use it as a lavalier microphone or as an external mic for a recording device. You will be surprised with extremely clear calls and lag-free communication with your teammates in games as these microphones are really designed smartly.
Sell your old laptop online for money
source: thegadgetflow.com
The creative possibilities here are endless and you could repurpose your old laptops for some really productive applications, reuse their components to design some smart devices, or DIY gifts for your friends. But if you do not have time for all that DIY stuff or you just want to get rid of your old laptop, you can easily donate it or sell it online for a good amount of money.
There are many online stores like CashMartIndia, Cashify, and InstaMart where you can sell these old laptops with great ease. You just have to visit their website and find your laptop’s maker and model on the list. Now you have to specify a little about your laptop’s working condition. If your laptop doesn’t have any signs of physical damage, the screen is not smashed, and all the parts are working, as usual, you can get decent money for your old laptop.
Even if your laptop is not functioning well, or some components or applications do not work at all, it still has a great value. Depending on the condition of your laptop, the smart AI-powered algorithm will decide a value for it and offer you a quote.
If you are happy with the quote, you can proceed further to book a pickup schedule with that company. On your scheduled day and time, some executive from the company will arrive at your doorstep to examine the condition specified by you on the website. If everything matches, he will pick up the laptop from you and transfer the quoted amount to your bank account instantly. This way you can easily sell your old laptop sitting at home.
If you still have a great bond of attachment with your old laptop and do not want to sell it, you can donate it to some underprivileged student who can use it for his educational purposes. This way, your beloved gadget will live longer for a while and contribute to a noble cause.
Now, we have discussed a variety of wonderful ways you can get rid of your old laptop – you can repurpose it, you can mine it for the components, you can sell it or donate it – the choice is upon you.
