this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Selfhosted

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Old laptops can are actually great servers—hear me out:

  • Built in KVM
  • Low power consumption
  • Battery = UPS for power blips
  • SSD (sometimes)
  • Wifi + Ethernet = Redundant NICs
  • Quiet (sometimes)
  • Small form factor
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

Really old laptops have PCMCIA slots too that you can hook into newer interfaces. I used a PCMCIA eSATA card for a laptop NAS!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The battery is usually long gone by the time it becomes a server though.

Absolutely. I still have my laptop from high school, and it's battery has been long gone. The screen is on its last legs.

Maybe it will be a server one day, but for now it's my DnD laptop. Sucks a bit when somebody bumps the power cord and the battlemap turns off. But it's still limping by.