(+) Use an Old Computer as a Backup Server

Back in the old days of home computers, say twenty years ago, most of us had one free-standing computer in the house, and the whole family shared it. Those days are now long gone. Many families, perhaps most, now have multiple computers. As computers have become more affordable, portable, and necessary, it’s now common to find multiple computers scattered throughout a home. There is often one desktop or laptop or tablet computer per family member. In fact, most of our cell phones are also computers these days. With today's technology, the in-home computers are easily connected together by a network, sharing one Internet connection. 

If you already have a broadband connection with a router, you probably already have a network installed whether you know it or not. If you have wi-fi installed at home, you definitely have a network.

While many people may not realize it, once the network is installed, it is easy to also share printers, disk drives, and more. It’s even easy to share the resources among different operating systems. For instance, in my home we have Windows, Macintosh, Chromebook, Linux, iPad, Android  and “smartphone” computers all connected together via a mix of wired and wi-fi wireless connections. (Yes, we do own too many computers!) All the computers share the same Internet connection, the same two printers, and the same file server for storage of backup files.