Aging computers shouldn't go to waste

How many of you out there hate to see aging computers go to waste?

I guess you could say that I have a bit of available soft spot for them because I have a habit of acquiring these machines from people and fixing them up when necessary so they can be put right back into service.

I personally have two older machines that I use on a constant basis.

A 400MHz Arch Linux powered system with a 160GB hard drive serves as the file and streaming audio server for my house.

My other machine is a 500MHz Compaq Presario 1200 laptop that runs Slackware. I run Openbox on it combined with my favorite text-based applications and things couldn't be better.

Unfortunately, many people have a tendency to automatically deem them as completely worthless even though they are still useful machines. I have never understood why people throw away perfectly good computers just because they are out-dated compared to the latest available hardware on the market.

There really is no reason why someone can't find a use for these aging machines because a light-weight GNU/Linux distribution does wonders when it comes to breathing new life into a computer which would happily continue to serve people for many years provided that it is properly maintained.

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