Yeah, absolutely. Same here, I find used laptops often make GREAT homelab systems, and ones with broken screens/mice/keyboards can be even better since you can get them CHEAP and still fully use them.
I have 4 doing various things including one acting as my “desktop” down in the homelab. But they’re between 4 and 14 years old and do a great job for what they’re used for.
- years 5-10: my kids use them (generally beating the crap out of them, covering them in boogers/popsicle juice, dropping them, etc).
- years 10-15: low-power selfhosted server which tucks away nicely, and has its own screen so that when something breaks I don’t need to dig up an hdmi cable and monitor.
EDIT: because the OP asks for hardware: my current backup & torrent machine is a 4th gen i3 latitude e7240.
Yeah, absolutely. Same here, I find used laptops often make GREAT homelab systems, and ones with broken screens/mice/keyboards can be even better since you can get them CHEAP and still fully use them.
I have 4 doing various things including one acting as my “desktop” down in the homelab. But they’re between 4 and 14 years old and do a great job for what they’re used for.
@ripcord @GnuLinuxDude The lifecycle of my laptops:
- years 1-5: I use them.
- years 5-10: my kids use them (generally beating the crap out of them, covering them in boogers/popsicle juice, dropping them, etc).
- years 10-15: low-power selfhosted server which tucks away nicely, and has its own screen so that when something breaks I don’t need to dig up an hdmi cable and monitor.
EDIT: because the OP asks for hardware: my current backup & torrent machine is a 4th gen i3 latitude e7240.