Howdy!

My parents have a 10+ years old HP that is almost unusable, but they want to keep the computer since they use it to print documents and it “looks nice.” I’m trying to find a viable solution to make the PC run smoother. Here are the options I’m considering, and I want your opinion on those:

  1. Install a Windows-like Linux distro so my parents aren’t lost. I showed them Ubuntu, but it wasn’t conclusive.
  2. Running a thin client that connects via RDP to a Windows 10 or 11 VM on my Proxmox server. Would USB passthrough work? We have a stable network, so latency isn’t a big issue.

Since I’m only home during weekends, I don’t want something that could break easily. Technology and them is not a match.

If you have any other ideas, I would really appreciate it.

Happy homelabbing!

  • hodak2BEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Get a half decent mini pc for like $200. It’s a small box and “looks nice” and will connect to any printer you want. It will be virtually silent and use almost no power.

    If they ask what happened just say it always looked like that.

  • notautogenerated2365BEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I don’t know about option 2… if you are only home during weekends, I would stick to something more reliable. (and no, I am not sure if USB passthrough would work this way or not.)

    If you want to really boost performance, I would change the hardware. Since the laptop is 10+ years old, it likely has DDR3 SODIMM memory and something like a 640 GB super-slow 5400 RPM 2.5 inch hard drive (of course, check inside the laptop before buying parts if you plan on changing hardware).

    I would give it at least 8 GB of RAM (for printing / editing documents and web browsing) seems like a good idea (I would get Crucial or Samsung because then you don’t have to play with XMP, which is unsupported on some laptops, to get the full speed). Of course, upgrading to a 2.5 inch SATA SSD would greatly improve boot and load times. But, be careful, as some laptops only leave enough room in the 2.5 inch drive bay to just fit a thin 5400 RPM hard drives. A lot of SSDs are thicker than that, so make sure you have the room if you choose to do this.

    With an SSD and 8 GB of RAM, you could just theoretically use the built-in Windows reinstall feature to get a completely fresh Windows install, and it should work fine for a while (should be Settings > Update and Security > Recovery > Reset This PC).

    Or, you could get a nice Windows-like Linux distro like Kubuntu or Linux Mint.