Use an Old Laptop as a Media Center

On a related note, old laptops can be repurposed as media centers, storing your videos and music, ready to be streamed around your home. It's an lightweight task, so it suits older hardware, and it means you can keep plenty of hard drive space free on your brand new laptop as well.

Software such as Plex or Kodi is perfect for the task (and can even serve up media to devices outside your home if needed), or you can use the Music and TV apps that Apple supplies with macOS to do the job. The wireless streaming protocols we mentioned earlier mean that you shouldn't have to do too much in terms of setup.

Alternatively, you can just use your old laptop as a dumping ground for any type of file that needs to be accessed from other computers and devices in the place where you live. Both Windows and macOS make it easy to configure a home network, so the old laptop's hard drive is visible to other computers.