These questions are unrelated to each other:

1. My old laptop is a 14.1" Toshiba Satellite w/ a Core Duo T2300 @ 1.6Ghz, 1GB of RAM, 100GB hard drive. It's almost 3 years old. It has no problems except that the keyboard is sorta messed up (The 's' key is broken and the 'm' key doesn't register 50% of the time). It's triple-booting its original XP Pro installation, W7 Beta, and OSx86 (iDeneb). Wifi doesn't work in OSx86 so it's not really usable for me.
   
   I have a new laptop and a desktop now, so this old one is sitting around doing nothing. What should I do with it? I've considered selling it but I'd rather keep it if there's a use for it (especially since it wouldn't sell for much).
2. My Thinkpad X61 tablet is draining power like a *****. I have pretty much everything set to power saver / minimized, enabled SpeedStep and all the enhanced sleep states, etc. I got RMClock but I'd rather not undervolt it. It's still averaging about 12-14W doing almost nothing or light web browsing. Other people in Thinkpad forums report an average of 8-10 W doing the same -- a little higher (11-12) on moderate load, and down to even 7 or 6 while idling. Does anyone have any ideas if something in Vista might be causing this (as seems to be believed by these other forums, although there are two main groups of people -- those in my predicament and those in the 8-10 W group and most in both are using Vista). Search/Indexing is already on max power saver while on battery. Etc. Screen dimmed. Hard drive set to spin down after a minute (although it seems to never spin down).

Thanks in advance for any help >_<

You may be able to find a replacement keyboard on ebay for cheep...that'll help out the first one.

Hrrrm. If I replace the keyboard (!$10-15) and buy a $30 USB Wifi dongle, I may be able to make it into a functional OSx86 machine. Worth the $50 investment? Or more worth it to use it as something else (media server? Although I've never set one up before and have no idea how / what the benefits are to having one)

Yea, I went through two keyboards on my 6 year old laptop.
Def. worth it. Just use other OS if you want to use internet?

You could make the old laptop into a music server - just leave iTunes open and dump all your music onto it (assuming it fits)?

I was going to say the same thing. A laptop like that would make a great compact server for anything really.

Bah I don't have that much music What exactly is the benefit of such a server? I'm not too familiar w/ having media servers or otherwise (what other servers could I implement)?

I'm still heavily considering the keyboard + USB WiFi dongle and whether it's worth the $50 -_-


Also, anyone have any idea on the second one? haha

I ran another test yesterday and according to other forums if it idles at around 7W (or less) it's correct and if it's >9W (which it is for me) I have the "drain bug," although I can't figure out why since I have C4 enabled and pretty much everything set to what they recommended...

You could hook it up to your TV for warez movies, then?

I already have my primary computer (HTPC) hooked up to my TV <_<

Give it to me?

Seems like your problem with the tablet is likely hardware related, is it under any kind of warranty?

http://lifehacker.com/5196069/build-an-under+the+cabinet-kitchen-pc-from-an-old-laptop

plus the wifi dongle?

I got your wifi dongle right here.

It's under warranty, but I'd rather not send it in just for something like this (Lenovo is a ***** w/ timeliness and I need it)... plus I'm not entirely sure it's a software issue as other people have reported having it and it going away randomly/on its own w/out figuring it out I dunno

Tibby: that face is

You would have to be very careful with using a laptop as a server, they were not designed for 24/7 constant use.

I basically killed an old laptop after a few weeks, by running Folding@Home 24/7.

You have a crappy laptop.

I've ran stuff like that for years, no problem.

Maybe Triscuit's was CRAPPIER

Yea, my old laptop wouldn't turn off if you turned it on so I had it running pretty much 24/7. Once in a while the power source would slip out and it would power off (without informing me at the requested low power) and it would take me anywhere from a couple hours to a couple days to get it on.

I've been running the laptop in question 24/7 anyways. I had an uptime of almost three weeks once and no problems. The thing is a trooper.

I have to admit that Toshiba makes a pretty solid laptop. The thing is plenty fast, too, despite being pretty outdated.

.... I just said it wouldn't turn off if you turned it on

Possibly, but then I would consider you lucky. I standby my original statement - No laptop is designed for 24/7 usage. Powered on IDLE is different than powered on under load.

Does anyone happen to know of a good/commonly-referenced computer parts reseller at which I could find a replacement keyboard that's not eBay?

Also, I feel like I'm retarded, but -- I can't figure out how to set up a computer as a streaming media server. I'm trying this on my HTPC right now, not my laptop, but the issue is I just don't know how to do it and my Googling has failed -_-

So, uh ... is there a way to set up computer #1 such that another computer on its LAN (computer #2) can view media on computer #1 using computer #1's hardware and codecs? Cuz that's what streaming is supposed to be, right? I want my HTPC to do all the hard work and my laptop to just receive a stream of the video.