With endless room for growth and constant innovation, the technology industry isn’t exactly known for its sustainability. New products are always being created, and older ones are continuously becoming obsolete in a perpetual cycle. This Earth Day, we have an opportunity as consumers and tech enthusiasts to reflect on how we use — and get rid of — our great laptops when they’re no longer great. Recycling is always better than sending a laptop to the landfill (and in many cases, throwing away anything with a lithium-ion battery is illegal or strongly discouraged), but the best way to combat E-waste is to keep old hardware up and running for as long as possible. Even when you need a new daily-driver laptop, there are plenty of ways to give the one you’re replacing a new lease on life.
From using an aging laptop as a retro game console to turning it into an external monitor, these devices can still provide real value and utility for years after they become obsolete. Although I’m a tech reviewer and see the latest and greatest PC hardware come across my desk regularly, I collect old laptops and am always impressed at how usable devices from five, 10, or even 15 years ago can be. If you have a laptop that’s sitting in a drawer somewhere that seems destined for the recycling center, take a look at these four simple and creative ways to revitalize it for many years to come.
4 Use it as a retro gaming powerhouse
You might be surprised to learn your slow laptop can still crush old games
We’ll start off with a fun one, which is using an old laptop as a retro game emulator. Your laptop might be past its prime by modern performance standards, but think about the kind of hardware that powered old game consoles. Just about any laptop you have lying around is capable of playing retro games with great emulators. There is a handful of excellent emulation software available on PC, including Dolphin Emulator, which is a renowned GameCube and Wii emulator that has a Windows port. Most importantly, Dolphin Emulator requires just 2GB of RAM to run, meaning that even the lowest-spec laptops from years past should be able to perform fine while emulating retro games. Since the ROMs of retro games are incredibly small, low storage configurations shouldn’t interfere with your dreams of using an older laptop as a retro gaming device, either.
The easy way to turn an old laptop into a retro gaming console is to use a Windows emulator, but the better way is to use a Linux distribution designed for that kind of use. We turned a mini PC into a gaming possible using Batocera, which is a version of Linux that comes with pre-packaged emulators and a clean UI. If you want to go all-in on gaming on your old laptop, we have a guide to installing Batocera below. However, sticking with Windows is the quick and easy option — and it’ll also allow you to use the laptop for other things if needed.
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3 Turn it into a home server
There are endless ways to use old laptops as a server
A less interesting, but still very useful, way to keep an old laptop up and running is to set it up as a home server. Like with game emulation, laptops can be used as servers with varying degrees of utility depending on how much time and effort you’re willing to put into the setup process. Windows can be a serviceable operating system for a home server, and works just fine for something like Plex, which is a very popular media hosting software. There are some considerations to be made when it comes to power, because laptops aren’t designed to be plugged into wall power nonstop and removing the battery is ideal. However, a Windows laptop is still great as a file or media server. Again, you’ll get more flexibility if you’re willing to go with a Linux distro like Ubuntu Desktop or Server, but it’s not required.
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2 Use it as an external monitor
Most laptops running Windows 10 or 11 have native external monitor support
You might not know it, but using a Windows 10 or Windows 11 computer as an external monitor for another PC is a native feature built into the OS. Many laptops support it, so using an aging laptop as a portable monitor for your new one can be an excellent way to keep it in use for longer. Since literally all the processing power is handheld on your new laptop or desktop PC, your old laptop’s hardware won’t drag down the experience. Windows 10 and 11 both use Miracast, an open display casting standard, to “project” one computer’s desktop onto another. In the Projection settings menu within the Windows settings app, there a few options you’ll want to adjust on an old laptop that will receive another PC’s display output:
1. Change the Some Windows and Android Devices can project to this PC when you allow them to option to Available everywhere on secure networks via the dropdown menu.
2. Change the Ask to project to this PC option to First time only via the dropdown menu.
3. Change the Require PIN for pairing option to First time via the dropdown menu.
After that, all it takes to use the old laptop as a wireless external monitor is launching the Wireless Display app. Then, on the new PC, click the Connect to a wireless display button in the Windows 10 or 11 settings app. Follow the on-screen prompts to continue the setup, and that’s about it. It’s really that simple to use, and this is the reason why using an old laptop as an external monitor is one of the best ways to utilize aging hardware. The functionality provides so much utility while requiring so little effort, and it might save you from having to spend money on the best portable monitors.
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1 Turn it into a Chromebook
Installing ChromeOS Flex can give your laptop a new lease on life
We’ve saved the best option for last, and that’s turning your old Windows laptop into a ChromeOS device. One of the perks of ChromeOS is that it’s an incredibly light operating system (because it is Linux-based) and can run on low-power systems. So, if your laptop is no longer capable of running Windows, it might still be able to perform well as a ChromeOS laptop. The same can be said about any Linux distro, for the most part, but there’s a reason we’re referencing ChromeOS specifically. That’s because Google has a version of ChromeOS specifically designed for this purpose, called ChromeOS Flex.
Google says that ChromeOS Flex takes just five minutes to be installed, and the only thing you need is a flash drive that can be used as a bootable USB device. The quick and easy setup process is what makes using an old laptop as a ChromeOS system accessible to all, and we have a complete guide on getting started if you’re interested. The cool thing about this option is that Google created ChromeOS Flex, in part, to reduce E-waste. On its product page for ChromeOS Flex, Google claims that converting 10,000 devices to ChromeOS Flex can prevent 50,000 lbs of e-waste, and what better time is there to be a part of that initiative than Earth Day.
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Hardware upgrades are a great option, too
There are a lot of simple ways to breathe new life into a dying laptop — ones that consumers of all skill levels can take advantage of. However, if you have a bit of computer know-how and are willing to make a few hardware upgrades to your system, even more possibilities are available. While it’s difficult or impossible to replace the memory or storage found in many new laptops in 2024, older computers are much easier to repair. You can swap out the HDD or SSD and RAM in old PC or Mac laptops with just a few screws in some cases. What’s more is that, since these systems are older, replacement SSDs and SODIMM memory sticks cost virtually nothing these days.
Whether you choose to go the hardware or software route, the ways to keep an ancient laptop in use for years or more before eventually being recycled are really only limited by your imagination. We hope these ideas kickstart an Earth Day project that helps that old laptop you’ve got in storage somewhere stay alive, because one thing is certain: anything is better than tossing it into a landfill or sending it off to a recycling center.