Old laptops also make for great servers and hobby computers. If you don’t need the form factor of a pi or mini pc, throw Debian or whatever on an old laptop and play away! I’ve got jellyfin, my DNS, reverse proxy and an octoprint server running on mine. It’s the little heart of our network.
IMO, one of the biggest risks of using a laptop as a server or some type of utility system is that you may not look at it regularly enough to see if the battery has a problem.
Go look at your hardware folks. Just stare at it for a few minutes every few months or more frequently. See if anything looks strange or different about it.
Old laptops also make for great servers and hobby computers. If you don’t need the form factor of a pi or mini pc, throw Debian or whatever on an old laptop and play away! I’ve got jellyfin, my DNS, reverse proxy and an octoprint server running on mine. It’s the little heart of our network.
And, if it hasn’t gone bad, the unit has a built in UPS!
I was thinking about adding that, but I also don’t want anyone blaming their localized fireworks display on me if it does go bad.
IMO, one of the biggest risks of using a laptop as a server or some type of utility system is that you may not look at it regularly enough to see if the battery has a problem.
Go look at your hardware folks. Just stare at it for a few minutes every few months or more frequently. See if anything looks strange or different about it.