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Running a Plex Media Server on an Old Laptop

by dv December 17, 2015 3 Comments

Plex Server on Dell Latitude LaptopI’ve been running a Plex Media Server off on old laptop for more than a year now without a hiccup. A few years ago Jess came home with these decade old Dell laptops that her work was going to throw away, and I’ve just tinkered with them off and on. Initially, I tried to run XBMC, then various linux distros, Windows for my kids, etc. Finally, I gave one away and settled on a Plex server for the remaining laptop. It’s missing some keys, I installed Xubuntu and doubled the RAM (from 512mb to 1GB!), and it’s hit it’s stride.

Most people run their Plex server on much more beefy iron, like with Core i7 processors and 16gb of RAM. Our usage is pretty simple, however, and our lil’ ol’ laptop does the job. The primary use is to stream Plex “channels” and watch our few movies through our Roku. I don’t do any major transcoding and the setup works pretty flawlessly. I gave it a static IP, wired it to our router, mounted the external hard drive, and it sits under our printer stand, gathering dust and humming away with humility and utility.

Here are the full specs:

Dell Latitude D610
Intel Pentium M processor 1.73GHz
1GB Memory
Xubuntu 14.04 LTS
Plex Media Server 0.9.12.*
1TB Western Digital Hard Drive for movies, etc.

Like a dummy, I only recently realized that my Roku was running in SD mode to my 1080p flat screen. I hooked up an HDMI cable from Roku to TV and now we have HD glory.

Like I said, the main use is for the the Plex Channels. We’re able to watch most videos off various providers, e.g. ABC, NBC, History Channel. I’ve even programmed a few Plex Channels myself, mostly for sports content.

I feel pretty good repurposing an old laptop for something useful, and the family has enjoyed being able to watch some shows we wouldn’t otherwise be able to watch easily.

Plex Server Interface on old Dell Lapotop
Plex Server Interface on old Dell Lapotop

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3 Replys to “Running a Plex Media Server on an Old Laptop”

  1. CamStar says:
    October 22, 2016 at 2:26 pm

    Hi, I have a similar setup, and even weaker than yours:
    Siemens Fujitsu Laptop
    1GHz Pentium III CPU
    512 MB RAM
    40 GB HDD
    500 GB Samsung HDD (installed in my Linux based satellite receiver and serving data to Plex over a SMB share)

    I am also very happy with it, unless I need some transcoding. In my case, the box does not do any transcoding at all. How is on your side? Do you have “poor” transcoding performance or nothing at all like me?

    Regards,
    camstar

  2. Kenneth says:
    June 19, 2020 at 1:46 pm

    Hey this is kind of of off topic but I was wanting to know if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding know-how so I wanted to get guidance from someone with experience. Any help would be greatly appreciated!|

  3. dv says:
    June 21, 2020 at 6:28 pm

    WYSIWYG. You can code HTML too if you want, but all that I know of use WYSIWYG.

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