What do you do with your old Mac when you buy a new one? Stick it in a closet and forget about it? Donate it to a charity? Recycle it—if you can?
Whatever you’ve done in the past, don’t do it again. There are plenty of good ways to use a spare Mac, from storing and playing your digital music to backing up a home or small-office network, or even turning your lights on and off automatically.
And in most cases, setting up a Mac to take care of such chores requires little more than the Mac, a few cables, some software—and our easy instructions.
- Old Mac, new tricks
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Turn your old Mac into a backup server
You can make your life easier—and keep your data safer—by setting up an old Mac or a Mac mini as a backup server. It’ll do all the heavy lifting of backing up every computer regularly, without requiring your constant assistance. Joe Kissell shows you how to turn a Mac into a dedicated server for backups.
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Turn your old Mac into a jukebox
If you’ve spent any time at all ripping your CD collection to your Mac, you’ve probably got gigabytes of music sitting on your hard drive. But what to do now that your old machine is just gathering dust? Simply attaching it directly to your stereo lets you control everything. Kirk McElhearn shows you how to get started.
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Turn your old Mac into a home-automation system
Automating your home—so the lights turn on automatically when darkness falls, the heat turns on a half an hour before you’re due home, or a security camera watches the house while you’re out—isn’t that hard to do. With a spare Mac and a bit of extra hardware, you can do it in a weekend.
There are plenty of good ways to use a spare Mac
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