Maximum PC

hello everyone, thank you for viewing my post, i recently got a laptop ( extra one got from a school , they were upgrading and selling them cheap ) i was wondering what i should do with it? i was thinking of setting some type of movie system, because i can set it up to my tv, and thinking of just running movies off there, kinda lame, but any good ideas?

i read once in one of my maximum pc mags about a windows home server or bit torrent machine, any suggestions would be great. oh by the way its "dell vostro 1400" also i can invest some money into it, nothing to large, probably $300 max


thank you for ur replays in advance

You don't want to use a laptop as a server. It will work, but not very well.
The laptop as a media PC is an interesting idea. If you take the screen off, and add a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard, it will work great.
Logitech DiNovo Mini:
http://www.logitech.com/keyboards/keyboard/devices/3848
XBMC:
http://xbmc.org/
Good luck!

Well, it would help to know the specs of the laptop. When you say you got it cheap that could be a good deal, or a mediocre one. There are a couple of Dell Vostro 1400's on ebay for between $150 and $190. If you have a higher spec'd model, a home server is not out of the question. Setting it up with your TV as a media center could be useful even with a lower spec'd model, but either way it would be a lot easier to advise with a little more info. At least CPU, GPU, RAM, NIC/WLAN, and HDD size would help, especially if you're looking for advice on upgrading.