Land of Misfit ThinkPads

Sometimes I feel like the closet in my office is this; where the toys are various old ThinkPads and ThinkPad parts. The other computers...... Dells, HPs, Toshibas.......? Yeah, they get sold off, if they are of the slightest value, given away if anyone at all wants it or thrown out otherwise. In my world, ThinkPads only, are good enough to occupy the precious little crevices under, between and on top of the other stuff!

I also don't mean my small (and I mean that literally, consisting of 3) collection of classic ThinkPads, a 701c, a 765xd, and an X20. No, I mean relatively recent vintage machine.... although, I did dig out a couple of things that will go in the museum; the WorkPad C505/C500 and 1st gen, ThinkPad Android Tablet.

 

I mean more along the lines of these machines.

e.g. at least of the Core/Core 2 Duo generation. These are all usable in some way or have their parts harvested for use. My question becomes: what do I do with these things?

I've so far, been unable to convince the powers-that-be to let me and my machines go up in the International Space Station, although they appear to have enough of them already! 

 Lenovo thinks that something like this would be a good idea. My wife says otherwise.....

I lean towards these sorts of projects, but one can only have so many computer photo-frames and yellow T60s.....

If my imagination/skill-set was better, it might be things like this....

Last year, I did the "turn an A31 system with 2631 Dock in a server" thing using CentOS, but that concept has been proven and I failed to find a practical use for it...... at least in my world. So now what?

I can do that all over again using the now, rather long-in-the-tooth Z61m with the gorgeous titanium lid into a mobile server and since it has a dual core processor, I can even use the languishing MS Windows Home Server 2011 license that I have sitting around. 

I could use either that, or the also sitting under my desk gathering dust cousin, the R500. It's another member of the "Team-Too-Chunky-To-Travel-Well" category! However, the R500 is of the Penyrn generation, and thus newer and more usable for other pursuits.

Then there are the others (no, this isn't my pile.... at least, not yet) that a project isn't so imminent....