Create a Online Network Storage Device

A network storage device is a computer which doesn’t have to be very powerful on your network you can store files on. Most people back up onto their external hard drive or to a online service like your Google Drive or Dropbox storage.

Uploading and downloading your files from an online service can be very time consuming depending on the speed of your internet and how may other people are currently using the service. External drives are very good except you always have to have them with you and plug them in where you need them.

Having a NAS (Network Attached Storage) machine is after than using an online solution and you don’t have to plug your external hard drive in when you are at home.

A good free software solution to look at using is FreeNAS which can be set up on your current wired or wireless network and you can even set it up to use over the internet when you are away from your home or office network.

Create a Web Server

Every time you access a website such as www.townsvillenerds.com or Google.com you are asking a computer on the internet called web server to send you the files on that website such as the text, images, video etc.

If there isn’t a lot of people using your web server, it doesn’t have to be very powerful and an old computer is the perfect solution for runnign such a machine.

It can be a lot of fun hosting your own internet web server and there is software out there to make it very easy to setup and free. It really depends on your internet service provider what sort of plan you have with them to determine you have enough data allowance to run a web server, so make sure you check you are not going over your limit. The more people who use your web server the more data you will use and you don’t want to go over your limit and have it cost you a lot of money so beware.

The industry standard for running a web sever is called Apache which can be run on a Linux, Windows or Apple computer.

Donate to a School

I use to work at a school as head of I.T.. Students just love taking computers apart but schools are very apprehensive about letting them take there brand new student computers apart just out of interests.

Donating your computers to school is usually are very needed exercise and most schools will be very interested in accepting your old computer or parts.