old laptops make excellent servers as well,
low power and built-in UPS.
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 11 Nov 2011, 20:19, 3 replies)

Just been handed
an old laptop to 'fix' - can someone hand me the turd polish please - a 550MHz Celeron where the keyboard doesn't work...

/edit with a 6Gb HD with bad sectors, lol!
(bottle_cap, Fri 11 Nov 2011, 22:39, closed)

this does arise for a certain amount of smugness
when you ahve one in the office of a manufacturing facility and one of the phases of mains power dies because of bollocked up on-site electrical maintenance- 1/3 of people in the open plan office find their PC goes 'DINK!' then black screen, taking with it several hours worth of unsaved work and I'm just fine and dandy on my lappy.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sat 12 Nov 2011, 1:28, closed)

Good point
Although old laptop batteries tend to have off-grid lifespans in minutes rather than hours, so you have to sort things out promptly if the power goes off.
(Connor Lingus is running this monkey farm now, Sun 13 Nov 2011, 23:48, closed)