Geek News and Musings

Build an Under-the-Cabinet Kitchen PC from an Old Laptop [DIY]

Inspired by our guide to giving an old laptop new life with cheap or free projects, Lifehacker reader Brian turned his aging Dell laptop into an incredible under-the-cabinet kitchen PC.

Brian uses his saucy setup to pipe music to his kitchen via Pandora, view his Google Calendar, and get a look at the news. He needed a lightweight operating system that would support Flash, and ultimately settled on the much-beloved Puppy Linux. A little tinkering, two coat-hangers (which he used for mounting the laptop), and some elbow grease later, Brian’s put together a very cool kitchen computer.

Despite having put together a great setup already, Brian has a few more ideas for spicing up his setup in the future:

• Integrate software keyboard for occasional logins
• Cron-like item scheduling for time based events, ( ie, show weather in morning, news at night )
• Limited command support for auto-shutdown of the appliance
• A RSS feed integrator showing semi-random news items stock ticker style.

If Brian’s flavor of laptop repurposing isn’t quite your cup o’ tea, try turning your laptop into a wall-mounted computer or one of our other favorite laptop projects.

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