[vox] What would you do with...?

[Michael J Wenk]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 03:28:55PM -0700, Richard Crawford wrote:
> Right now, We've got five computers in my house, four of which are being
> used full-time.  Our latest census shows us:
> 
> 1.  A laptop running WindowsXP
> 2.  A laptop which dual-boots WindowsXP and (unsuccessfully) Debian
> 3.  A tower which is my personal workstation, dual-booting Windows 2000
>     (though I can't remember when was the last time I used Win2K on that
>     machine) and RH 8
> 4.  A tower which is our household server, running RH 8 (does e-mail
>     and web and files and printing)
> 
> I also have an old laptop, a Gateway Solo 2500 with 96MB memory, 4GB RAM,
> an an Intel Celeron 300MHz chip.  I've got Debian installed on that one,
> but it mostly sits on my bookshelf and waits for something to do.
> 
> I also have a friend who's getting rid of their old Gateway tower.  I
> don't have the specs on it, but I'm sure it's better than the old Gateway
> laptop.  I'm trying to convince my friend that she should give this one to
> me for free. ;-)
> 
> So my question is:  if you had two spare perfectly functioning computers
> (a laptop and a tower) sitting around your house, what would you do with
> them?

I have one spare emachines system that has win98 on it(it doesn't boot)
and as soon as I rewire my area to support a third system, I will
probably try to bring it back from the dead, plop gentoo or debian on it
and use it for a media server.  I think the sound card on it is better
than the one I tried to do this last time(or perhaps I'll find out it
was the wires.)  

Alright, suggestions: 

1) X10 household controller/automator. 
2) media station
3) NWN server
4) Seperate load off your household server, make it a web or fileserver
5) space heater for the kitchen(if it generates a good amount of heat) 
6) Give to me so I can do any of the above or maybe use it as secondary
firewall for the media side of my network.