As we used to own an Internet cafe, we have a dozen or more old PCs lying around. Most of them work but they are badly outdated, and most of them haven't been used in more than ten years. I just ordered a thing called Xtra-PC, which is basically a Linux bootup on a thumb drive. Since it costs only $25, I just ordered one. If it works, I can use it to go through all of our old computers and get digital photos and anything else from them that we might want, and maybe I'll leave one of them set up in my office so that I can play around with Linux some. Years ago, I tried to install a version of Linux (Ubuntu) onto a Gateway computer that wasn't even obsolete yet, at the time, and it crashed partway through the installation and I've never been able to get it working again, so maybe this will work, and maybe it won't. The Xtra-PC is supposed to be used to get some life out of an old computer. It comes with the Firefox browser, OpenOffice, a mail application, photo viewer, and some other stuff, and is supposed to work even if the hard drive on that computer is damaged or crashed. I ordered the cheapest one, but there are others, the differences being in speed and storage space. Xtra-PC Basic - $24.99 Xtra-PC Turbo 16 - $34.99 Xtra-PC Turbo 64 - $49.99 Xtra-PC Pro - $79.99 When it arrives and I've had a chance to try it out, I'll let you know.
That sounds kind of neat. I had two get rid of two laptops in the pas couple oft years due to hardrive crashes. My backup puter to this one is a Lenovo Thinkpad, but there is a generic charging system on it, and it won't pick up the router,, but if you plug it into the modem it works fine...it is just awkward. Anyway, yeah, let us know.
This is the first time I've heard of that xtra-pc and I hope it would work well for your purpose. For those 10-year old computers, I don't think you can get much except for the files therein, like what you said about getting some pictures. In our office, we consider computers that are 10 year old and older to be obsolete for they may be running on Windows 98 and their processor is not compatible with the software that are available now. By the way, we just purchased a new hard disk for archiving files. It is a Seagate 2 TB which can hold all our photos, videos and other files for safekeeping. However, it wouldn't run just like that so we had to tweak the old home desktop before it can operate successfully. Our 6-year old computer is still running on Windows XP which is already obsolete.