Ubuntu-Library-book a use for legacy hardware

[Omnios]

Hi I thought about this as I am getting my nieces old laptop this month which has a broken cd. Anyways for years now I have been reading about very old legacy laptops and potential uses for them. I think I finally came across a good use for older laptops.

First off counting on how old the laptop is and its hardware you might be able to do different things with a old laptop that would make it usefull in many ways. As a library-book a legacy laptop may have a few uses in that if may become a portable library and reference book that could be put to good use. My main interet in this that got me interested is that I have huindreds of tutorials that I can not spend long periods of time with my crt monitor because of uncomfortable seating and glace from my crt. Now a laptop has a crt monitor with less eye strain for long hours of studying. Also being portable like a book you can use it anyware you wish.

Now the strength here is that a useless piece of junk may become usefull in many ways. Personally when I get my laptop I am going to load all my tutorials on it and use it a programming reference manual etc. I also found books on CD at the library that may be usefull for listening to books etc.

The end result will be a portable library that I can take anywhere I go.

Anyone else have any ideas for the succ use?

[barney_1]

Sounds like a good idea. You don't need much horsepower or storage space if you're just viewing PDF/TXT/HTML. I wonder if there's some type of "tablet" mod you can get so you could have the screen flipped around, closed, and sitting on your lap.

One point of clarity, CRT means Cathode Ray Tube, which is the bulky old computer monitor. A laptop usually has a TFT (thin film transistor) display which is a type of LCD (liquid crystal display).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT_LCD

[saulgoode]

I have an old 486 laptop which I keep around mostly for reading: Linux Howtos, program source code, books I download from Project Gutenberg, etc. It is only 25MHz with 12Meg of RAM but that is quite sufficient for its intended purpose (X11 is not a necessity) and it is smaller, lighter, and (most importantly) does not generate as much heat as more modern laptops. It has really come in handy when there is a nighttime power outage and I have nothing else to do.

I do have a more modern laptop which has wireless to my home network, but my old 486 still fits more comfortable on my lap and sees a bit of use.