What's up with that old laptop?

Old Dell laptop running Ubuntu 14.04

Linux, a free, open source operating system, has long fascinated me with its ability to breathe new life into aging, sluggish, glommed up windows computers. Over the last five plus years, I've upgraded close to one hundred windows computers destined for the great digital recycle bin with versions of Linux that allowed the owners to enjoy years of renewed, snappy, secure computing. Recently, I was performing some minor updates to one such laptop and I thought it might be a good time to revisit Linux on old Laptops.

Two or three years ago, several teachers in the senior high approached me about repairing old laptops for use in their classrooms. All of the laptops were pretty beat up. You could tell they had seen hard use; floppy screens, dented keyboards, loose or missing bezels, and other assorted physical ailments were common. Still, most had working hardware. Another common element was that they were all running some version of Windows. Many were running xp, some vista, and even a few newer models ran windows 7. The final common theme is that they were all infested with malware, viruses, and other bloatware that caused the machines to perform poorly, insecurely, or not at all. Removing windows and installing a fresh copy of Linux (which comes with all the software you need to do 99% of everything you would ever want to do with a computer) took, in most cases, about twenty minutes per machine. For the teachers who asked to have their old 'junkers' made usable, and for the teachers who scored some usable relics at the right price through eBay, it was a free or inexpensive jump start to one to one computing.

But wait, we're already one to one, you think, and wonder why you might want to bother with an older laptop in your classroom. There are still some compelling reasons to consider the old laptop. Juniors and seniors were not part of the one to one rollout. A few old laptops can offset the deficit in mixed grade classes. And, kids (and some adults) can, occasionally, forget to charge or simply forget to bring their device. The old laptop makes a nice emergency fill in. Do you want to use the old device as your front line, first choice machine? Probably not, especially after using a MacBook Air. But if you have an old laptop kicking around, and might like the security or convenience of a snappy, spare computing device for your students or yourself, let me know. I'd be happy to get you going.