Can I combine the computing power of two laptops for everyday use?

Question

I have two laptops by different makers, both running Windows 10. Neither of them is comfortable enough for MS Office use or normal Web browsing. One has a better display, a quicker but smaller SSD, and an inferior Celeron CPU; the other has a poor display, a slower but bigger HDD, and a superior i3 CPU. The RAM is 4 gigabytes in both cases. Unfortunately, none of their extractable parts may be mixed together within either of them.

But can I combine their functions by software means?

The following ideas come to my mind:

• Set up an RDP connection so that the slower CPU / better display laptop be used as the terminal;
• Set up something like TeamViewer;
• Set up a cluster to share the RAM and the CPU;
• Use the laptop with the better display as a monitor for the other laptop;
• Install linux on both or one of them, and set up a cluster or remote desktop environment there.

What sounds more reasonable? Is there a better solution?

Thank you in advance for your ideas.

Answer 1

In short, no: you cannot combine the two laptops

You would face multiple issues such as lack of space, lack of compability of hardware components.

Instead:

I would go for the laptop with the good display (which is important for day-to-day use), the SSD over a HDD which typically has higher access and write speed and upgrade/modify that one to furfill the requirements you describe.

While the Intel Celeron family is indeed market-entry level, it could be overclocked to provide you with a better performance such as detailled here: intel celeron overclocking.

As for running the software, I would go for running Linux over Windows, especially when trying to maintain or revive legacy hardware for standard day-to-day use computers. Some distro's I could recommand are the light-weight xubuntu family or Manjaro, a more user-friendly distro based on the rolling-release schedule of Arch Linux. You can install ONLYOFFICE desktop editors software on linux using Snap, which provide you with a minimal, office like version of Word, Excel and Powerpoint including support for saving and opening the relevant extensions.