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Ask HN: what can I do with 3 recycled laptops?

4 points by txutxu ↗ HN
Hello,

After get rid of my old home networks (now I'm living in other country), I still have 3 old laptops I repaired.

Currently I use to make my research for new technologies on virtual machines, but I still have 3 laptops I think I could take with me after vacations to my work-country.

The question:

What are cool projects, or technologies, to explore today, given 3 laptops and a network switch ?

I'm seeking more for personal, home-time projects.

The electricity bill is included on my rent price.

Are Intel Centrino with +/- 1 or 2 G of ram suitable for bitcoin ?

8 comments

[ 11.2 ms ] story [ 35.7 ms ] thread
taproot
Clusters, honeypots, bitcoin mining, roll your own cloud.

Well thats a few to start with i guess.

Edit: Missed the part about bitcoin. They wont make you rich but anything is ok to dabble with it.

txutxu
Yea I think I could go the BitCoin way with these machines. I've read about bitcoin but never started.

About clusters and own cloud, I've enough dose at work, with better hardware :-)

The honeypot road also I think could be a fun project. Thanks.

jlengrand
Mine has become an awesome xbmc server :)
DanBC
Rip them apart and make frankenstein tablets?

Set up a "wargame" lab to learn security techniques.

eroullit
XBMC is good but those laptops might be a bit too loud as a proper mediacenter. Install proxmox (http://www.proxmox.com/) and make yourself a cluster of small openVZ containers/KVMs to experiment new OS or new services.
txutxu
These machines doesn't see to have virtualization capabilities so I think I'll go trough the security training path (honeypot, personal lab, etc).

Also maybe I'll put one of them to work on bitcoins to know better the technology.

The BOINC seems a interesting usage once I get bored of play with them.

Thanks for all the responses. Great tips.

federicola
You have 2 choices.

1)Create your own cloud, make them "servers" and make them host personal projects, cool apps, ask your friends to try to hack your "servers", just to try security policies etc..

2)Donate them to charity and use your new free time for some beers and meet girls in the new country. :))