Black Cat Blogs

After several years on helpdesk, a technician is bound to start turning over old gear. Sometimes, it’s a decade-old workstation with obsolete hardware (like the 2010 ThinkPad T510 that Punkfairie turned into a Windows XP nostalgiatory). Sometimes it’s a perfectly good thin client system, complete with x64 processor and NVME hard disk, that has been written off as garbage. Every now and then, you even get a near-mint last-gen laptop with modern parts that someone decided was easier to keep in a drawer than use for their job.

What else to do with these dozens of operable computers besides refurbish and redistribute them to extend life and slow the gears of production? At my current workplace, I have access to 3 main types of machines: thin client desktops; thin client laptops; and full system laptops.

Thin Client Desktops

Thin client desktops are the hardest to find use-cases for. Lately, I’ve been working with Lenovo m625’s with 2-core AMD A4-9120e processors and 8GB RAM. They have the power of about 1½ Raspberry Pi’s, but use a 65W transformer and can’t be USB powered. They can be VESA mounted, but the 1-Liter size makes it harder to conceal. We tried to run Windows on a few of them, but even the IoT Edition - designed for literal toasters - is a sad experience. This puts them in a niche as utility computers, too unwieldy to be a Thing and not substantial enough for a full desktop experience.

Primarily, my family uses these as home network servers for self-hostables like GoToSocial, Bitwarden, ArchiveBox, and more. Once Debian or Ubuntu Server is installed, the computer feels a lot more available and can serve many applications with little effort – especially when scaled down to at-home use. Considering the processor only draws a max 6W TDP (compare to the Raspberry Pi 4’s 7.5W TDP), this turned out to be a very energy efficient home server setup for the horsepower.

My favorite use case so far is it being an entertainment center hooked up to a non-smart TV in my living room. We originally went through the technical lengths to install Kodi and connect it with media on our NAS. This worked fine, and may have been more effective if we were hardcore torrenters, but it eventually became cumbersome as the hacky workarounds to access paid streaming services have gotten riskier and more obtuse. Now we mostly just work out of a web browser and file explorer from a wireless keyboard+touchpad – but having a dedicated media computer remains handy.

In 2024, my organization turned out a LOT of these little guys, so I ended up giving away well over 100 to the Fediverse community. Most of these were picked up by a gentleman who was organizing a comic books convention on a shoestring budget and needed basic terminals to expedite check-ins. Another gentleman picked up 1 for each of his 3 sons to teach them how to install and run Linux (brave man). Another person mentioned she needed servers for a gig she operates at outdoor music festivals.

A happy home for each little box. :)

Thin Client Laptops

Like their desktop-focused cousins, thin client laptops were built with one thing in mind: connecting to a remote server and letting it do all the work. But with a dedicated monitor and keyboard, they beg to be used for more than just a home server.

The thin client laptops I’m running through now are also Lenovo brand, model 14w – sometimes referred to as “Student Laptops” because they are intended for monotasking, like taking notes or watching a video stream with little else going on. (Whoever named these has apparently never been a student and never watched one work.) They offer a puny 2-core AMD 3015e that feels quite pathetic, despite ringing in at 3-times the benchmark of the A4’s from earlier. Even considering the rest of its traits – a commendable 128GB NVME drive and 8GB soldered RAM – the dual-core CPU simply drags its feet across the internet while trying to carry the heft of JavaScript. I originally imaged one of these with XFCE on Debian as a way to slow myself down at work. I didn’t realize how slow it was, though, until co-working with my partner one night and begging her to wait for me to get to the same website as her.

Needless to say, their usable range is much narrower – but they do have their benefits. Their power draw is also minimal at 6W TDP, making them great for low-energy environments. They are also passively cooled, feature no moving parts, and are feather light making them quite durable – as tested by me dropping it on the driveway several times while using it to follow car repair instructions. If you just need a screen to feed you a single stream of information that can be easily charged on solar power and won’t break from a stray drop, this is the right machine – which is exactly why I keep it tucked in my go-bag.

Full System Laptops

Truly the crown jewel of tech scrounging, full system laptops are built to run a full Windows system while paring down as little as possible. At my org, they are usually given to senior managers for one reason or another – specialty software needs, quicker start-up times, or just generally trying to look professional for donors and lawmakers.

Many of these were purchased in the late 2010s, before we shifted to a cloud desktop model and are finally starting to reach the end of their 7-year service life. Lenovo ThinkPad E485s are what I’m seeing most this year, decked out with a 4-core Ryzen 3 2200U processor it actually feels like a real computer (wow) and I've been imaging them with Linux Mint. They also have upgradeable hardware slots (woww) so I can upgrade them from their stock 8GB RAM, swap out the spinning hard disk with a modern SSD, and even pop in a bonus NVME drive for lightning-fast boot times. They have no USB-C ports (except for the charger), but does offer an Ethernet port handy for home network maintenance.

Conclusion

As an American, I’m spoiled rotten with technology and have gotten used to always having access to the hippest toys and most powerful machines – which also equates to increased usage of human slavery and allowing environmental degradation on a global scale.

Redirect computers bound for the dump, install Linux on them, and find them a home. Computers are a requirement for functioning in society, but still regarded as a luxury. Scarcity is a mindset that we can overcome by giving plentifully, and with nearly a quarter-billion new devices produced every year, there is simply no reason not to give away computers a-plenty.