Four Things To Do With Your Old PC

Have you recently found the best bezel-less monitor and upgraded all of your computer equipment? Then you may be wondering what you can do with your old PC. Everyone has an old PC knocking about; one that is just sitting in the corner of the room gathering dust. It’s because these machines are hard to throw away. You remember the good times like when you stole a loving game of Solitaire when you were supposed to be doing homework or maybe just have a few photo albums that are too valuable to throw away. And so it stays there in the corner of the room slowly fading from memory and silently judging you for not playing with it anymore. It was time to either throw this thing away or rekindle the relationship and we think we’ve come up with some pretty handy solutions. Here are four things to do with your old pc to make it useful again.

 

Use it as a Home Theater

This is so simple and it looks great. All you need to do is hook your PC up to a large-screen TV and download some free. Home Theater PC (HTPC) software like XBMC. Once you’ve done that and let the program scan your computer for your movies it will then download all the artwork, posters, and movie descriptions for said film and let you scroll through them as if you were paying for an expensive streaming service like Netflix.

Except here you don’t have to wait for things to buffer. It’s not just movies mind you. You can store your pictures, TV Shows, and games in this hub as well.

 

As a Retro Gaming Console

Ok, so we presume you stopped using your PC because it was starting to run slowly but we are sure the old girl will still have enough power to let you play games from your childhood. All you have to do is download an emulator and you can play great games from Nintendo and Sega which still stand up today.

ZSNES is a great emulator, so make sure to check that out. Just make sure to only download the games that you have purchased in the past. Otherwise, it is illegal.

 

For Remote Torrent Downloading

Utorrent is probably the most popular torrent client simply because it requires minimal processing power which is perfect for our old machines. With your low-powered machine, you can leave it on indefinitely without having to worry about expensive energy bills and downloading data 24/7.

You can even set up remote access that lets you add new torrents on the fly from an iPhone, laptop, or smartphone.

 

Set up a Home Network

Ok so you hear the word server thrown around a lot but what actually does it mean? Well, a server is a computer that stores data and “serves” it to other computers on the network. It can be a great way to back up your important work every night and also a useful way to store your media and stream it to your other devices.

That has the additional benefit of freeing up a lot of memory on your main computer. If that sounds appealing then you should check out FreeNas; it is free software that will allow you to set up a home server on old, low-powered machines. It’s also dead simple to set up.

So there you have it. Four things to do with your outdated PC. If you have decided to bite the bullet and say goodbye to your old machine then make sure to dispose of it properly. These older machines carry enormous amounts of poisonous lead inside them and that can be extremely damaging to wildlife. Just make sure to download your treasured photographs before you chuck them.

Title Image Courtesy: Flickr/Stella Dauer