Don't throw away your old laptop. Here are 4 ways it can make your new one even better

Published Oct 24, 2026, 11:31 AM EDT Aggy is a veteran writer and editor in the technology and gaming space. Having served as a Managing Editor for high-traffic digital publications, alongside being an editor and consultant for over a dozen sites. Aggy's published work spans a wide and respected array of tech and gaming outlets, including WePC, Screen Rant, How-To Geek, Android Police, PC Invasion, and Try Hard Guides. Beyond editorial work, Aggy's direct experience in the tech sphere extends to app development. Aggy has published two games under Tales and is always eager to learn and do more. He also likes working on computers and researching in his spare time. He knows about Windows, Linux, Audio, Video, and much more. Sign in to your How-To Geek account Most people hang onto an old laptop out of guilt, or because they're not sure what to do with it. It feels wasteful to recycle it, but a second laptop doesn't have to be a backup device or an emergency spare. It can make your main machine better by taking over the background tasks that would otherwise slow you down or eat your battery. You can turn it into a home server even without the screen Leaving it plugged in can ruin the battery One of the best things you can do with an old laptop is make it a home server that stays on all the time. Older machines work great for running light background stuff like Docker containers, a Plex or Jellyfin media server, Pi-hole for blocking ads across your whole network, or Home Assistant for smart home control. When these run on their own machine, they aren't hogging CPU and RAM on your main computer. A light OS like Ubuntu Server or Proxmox VE runs fine on older hardware because there's no heavy desktop interface to deal with. And since laptop CPUs are made to sip power, an old laptop acting as a server can pull a few watts when idle with the screen off. One bonus people sleep on when using a laptop as a server instead of a desktop is the battery that's already inside. It works like a small UPS, so if the power blips or cuts out for a moment, your server stays up, and you don't lose your media stream or kill your home automation scripts. Your main laptop wins too since nothing is running in the background. So it runs cooler, the battery lasts longer, and you can shut the lid and take it with you without taking down your whole home network. Still, running a laptop 24/7 comes with battery and heat issues. Leaving a laptop plugged in at full charge all the time puts a lot of wear on the battery cells, and when you add the heat that builds up inside a tight chassis, the battery can swell over time. A swollen battery can bend the case, crack the trackpad, or worse. To dodge this, check for a battery charge limit option in your laptop's software. HP, Lenovo, Dell, ASUS, and Microsoft Surface all have settings that stop charging at 50% to 80%, which takes a lot of strain off the battery. If the laptop is old enough and the battery pops out, you can just pull it and run the machine off the power adapter alone. Either way, make sure the laptop sits on a hard, flat surface with space for air to move underneath. It works great for holding all your backups You need to watch out for slow transfer speeds Another good option is turning your old laptop into a network-attached storage (NAS) box or a dedicated backup spot. With something like OpenMediaVault or TrueNAS installed, or even just a normal Linux setup with shared folders, your old laptop shows up on your home network as a little file server. Your new machine can then back up to it on its own using Windows File History, Time Machine on a Mac, or just a scheduled rsync job. You can usually squeeze more storage out of it too. Most older laptops have room for a 2.5-inch SATA drive or an M.2 SSD, and if the laptop has an old optical drive you don't use, a cheap caddy lets you swap it for a second hard drive. Moving big photo libraries, 4K video projects, and virtual machine files over to it frees up space on your main laptop. And if your main drive ever dies, you've got another copy of your data sitting right there. Just remember the limits. Transfer speeds are held back by the slowest link in the chain. A wired gigabit Ethernet connection maxes out around 112 to 117 MB/s in real use, which is fine for most stuff. Over Wi-Fi, it's slower and less steady, especially on older hardware. If the laptop has USB 3.0 or newer, drives plugged straight into it can move data much faster. You can use the screen as a second monitor You can just stream to it over your Wi-Fi An old laptop screen is a good monitor, so using it as a second display is pretty smart. Ask anyone who uses more than one screen, and they'll tell you it's hard to go back. You can keep reference material, chat windows, a browser, or a dashboard off to the side while your main screen stays on whatever you're working on. You can do this wirelessly through software, or by pulling the screen out of the laptop and turning it into a standalone monitor. The software route is the easier one. On Windows, Project to this PC streams over Wi-Fi once you install the free Wireless Display optional feature from Settings. Third-party tools like Spacedesk or Deskreen give you more choices and work across more platforms. Deskreen runs in a browser, so it works on almost anything. One catch with Deskreen is that you sometimes need a small plug in your main PC's HDMI port (called an EDID dummy plug) to get your PC to treat it as an extended display instead of just mirroring. If the old laptop has a dead motherboard but the screen still works, you can pull the panel out and turn it into a proper external monitor with a cheap controller board. You look up the exact model number printed on the back of the panel, order the matching controller board, and wire it up to take HDMI or USB-C input. It's a bit of a project, but you end up with a real monitor and no lag. Quiz 8 Questions · Test Your KnowledgeWeird and quirky laptops throughout the yearsTrivia challengeFrom dual-screened oddities to foldable curiosities — how well do you know the strangest laptops ever made?DesignHistoryHardwareBrandsInnovationBegin The Lenovo ThinkPad 701C, released in 1995, was nicknamed 'the Butterfly' because of what unusual feature?AIts screen folded outward like butterfly wingsBIts keyboard split and expanded when the lid openedCIts trackpad was shaped like a butterflyDIts hinge mechanism flapped open from both sidesCorrect! The ThinkPad 701C featured a split keyboard that unfolded and expanded as the lid was opened, resembling butterfly wings in motion. It was such a remarkable feat of engineering that a unit was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.Not quite. The 'Butterfly' nickname came from the keyboard, which was split into sections that unfolded and interlocked as the lid opened. This clever mechanism allowed a full-sized keyboard to fit inside a compact chassis, and the design was considered groundbreaking enough to land in MoMA's permanent collection.Continue Which company released the Audrey in 2000, a quirky internet appliance sometimes compared to a laptop that was discontinued after just one year?ASonyB3ComCPalmDCompaqCorrect! 3Com released the Audrey in 2000, marketing it as a home internet appliance designed for kitchens. It sold poorly and was discontinued within a year, becoming a cult curiosity among retro tech collectors.Not quite. The Audrey was made by 3Com, a networking company better known for its Palm devices and routers. It was a touchscreen internet terminal aimed at households, but its high price and limited functionality led to a swift and quiet death in 2001.Continue The Toshiba Libretto, first released in 1996, was notable for being extremely what?AHeavy, with a built-in printerBSmall, fitting in a shirt pocketCLoud, with built-in surround sound speakersDModular, with swappable screen panelsCorrect! The Toshiba Libretto was one of the tiniest fully functional Windows laptops ever made, small enough to slip into a shirt pocket. Despite its miniature size, it ran a full version of Windows 95 and had a working keyboard, making it an engineering marvel of the 1990s.Not quite. The Toshiba Libretto was celebrated for its incredibly tiny footprint — it was small enough to fit in a shirt pocket while still running full Windows 95. It became a beloved collector's item and inspired many ultra-miniature laptops that followed in later years.Continue Which laptop, released by Asus in 2009, featured dual screens instead of a traditional keyboard and touchpad layout?AAsus Eee Pad TransformerBAsus NX90CAsus TaichiDAsus Eee TopCorrect! The Asus Taichi was a dual-screen laptop that featured displays on both sides of the lid — one facing inward like a normal laptop screen, and one facing outward so it could be used as a tablet. It was a bold but commercially short-lived experiment in convertible computing.Not quite. The Asus Taichi was the dual-screen oddity in question. It had a screen on the inside of the lid for laptop use and another screen on the outside for tablet mode. While innovative, the concept never caught on widely and the Taichi quietly faded from Asus's lineup.Continue The Sony VAIO P series laptops, popular around 2009, had a screen aspect ratio described as unusually what?APerfectly squareBExtremely tall and narrowCVery wide and shortDCircular with rounded bezelsCorrect! The Sony VAIO P featured an ultra-wide, very short display at a resolution of 1600x768, giving it an unusually panoramic and squat appearance. The tiny device was marketed as a 'lifestyle PC' designed to be used standing up or in one hand.Not quite. The Sony VAIO P had a very wide but extremely short screen, with a resolution of 1600x768 that made it look almost like a stretched letterbox. Sony positioned it as a fashionable pocket-sized PC, and its bizarre proportions made it instantly recognizable and endlessly debated by tech reviewers.Continue The Dell XPS M2010, released in 2006, was sometimes called a 'desktop replacement' because it weighed approximately how much?A5 poundsB9 poundsC15 poundsD22 poundsCorrect! The Dell XPS M2010 weighed around 15 pounds and was so large it came with a Bluetooth keyboard that detached from the base. It was technically portable but barely practical, featuring a 20-inch screen and components that rivaled desktop towers of the era.Not quite. The Dell XPS M2010 tipped the scales at around 15 pounds — a true behemoth of a laptop. Its 20-inch screen and detachable Bluetooth keyboard made it feel more like a portable desktop than a genuine laptop, and carrying it anywhere was considered a workout in itself.Continue Which quirky laptop released in 2007 was specifically designed for children in developing countries and used a distinctive hand-crank for charging?AIntel Classmate PCBOne Laptop Per Child XO-1CAsus Eee PC 701DMicrosoft FlexGo LaptopCorrect! The OLPC XO-1 was a bold humanitarian project designed to bring computing to children in the developing world. Its distinctive green and white design, mesh networking capability, and hand-crank charging made it unlike any laptop before or since.Not quite. The One Laptop Per Child XO-1 was the hand-crank laptop. Designed by Nicholas Negroponte's nonprofit, it featured rugged construction, low power consumption, and a built-in hand crank so children without reliable electricity could still charge and use it. It became an iconic symbol of tech-for-good ambitions.Continue The Alienware Area-51m, released in 2019, was controversial among laptop enthusiasts for what unusual design claim?AIt had a built-in liquid nitrogen cooling portBIt featured a socketed, upgradeable desktop CPUCIts GPU was mounted externally in a separate caseDIt included a fold-out secondary monitorCorrect! The Alienware Area-51m caused a stir by including a socketed Intel desktop CPU — specifically from the LGA 2066 socket — in a laptop chassis, meaning users could theoretically upgrade the processor. This was almost unheard of in the laptop world and made it a unique if enormous beast.Not quite. The Alienware Area-51m's big party trick was housing a full socketed desktop CPU, making it one of the very few laptops ever sold with an upgradeable processor. The tradeoff was a chassis so thick and heavy it barely qualified as portable, but it fascinated enthusiasts who dreamed of future-proofing their laptop.See My Score Challenge CompleteYour Score/ 8Thanks for playing!Try Again It is still useful even with a broken screen You have to change the lid settings first If your old laptop has a cracked screen, a busted keyboard, or broken hinges, it can still be a useful machine running headless. That just means it runs without a display, so you can tuck it away in a closet or under a desk. You get to it entirely over the network using SSH for command-line tasks, or Remote Desktop, VNC, or something like Parsec for a full graphical interface. Setting it up headless means telling the OS to ignore the lid being closed. On Windows, you can set the lid-close action to "Do Nothing" in power settings. On Linux, editing a line in the logind config file does the same thing. You can also set up Wake-on-LAN, so the machine can sit in low-power sleep until you wake it from your main PC. Don't let your laptop collect dust An old laptop with a slow processor and 8GB of RAM is more than enough for a home server, a NAS, a second display, or a headless compute node. That's what most cheap laptops from the last several years came with, so there's a good chance the one in your closet can handle this. Just keep the heat in check, and that old laptop will actually pull its weight instead of being forgotten.