It's not possible for anyone to throw away his/her dearer old laptop because it's banged up a little. Even if the old laptop looks like outdated and underpowered, still it may have important features like small, quiet, and relatively low on power consumption, which makes it a valuable spare to be kept matters not even if the screen is damaged. There are some things like some free software, a little know-how, and some creative thinking that can help one to give new life to its laptop.

Building a no-monitor, low-power spare system

If the screen on one's laptop is not running fine then one should connect it with network cable, and then analyze how to set up the system. However, if one's system lacks Wake on LAN abilities, then it is not accessible.

Transforming it to a home server

Due to laptop's outstanding abilities, one can even keep the server next to his/her printer thus enabling printing from anywhere, employ a browser to get it grabbing bit torrents in windows or Mac systems, or set up one's own web server for grabbing files or hosting things like one's own personal Wiki. Here, a multi-purpose media player can play a very crucial role.

An improved digital photo frame

For one's laptop one should go to make for a sizable, attention-grabbing frame that can show whatever user want and possibly even grab photos as they're dropped on a main computer.

Open-source recommendations

1. Puppy Linux: Distribution of 97 MB, smooth interface, with basic uses.
2. Damn small Linux: A system with 50 MB capacity and 16 MB memory.

Change its LCD into a Stand-Alone Monitor

The user can also turni a perfectly good LCD laptop screen into a vertical-mounted monitor.