What can i do with my broken laptop?

i have a broken laptop too

broken screen and auto shutdown after 30-60 minute, over heating i guess

the model is old VAIO GRV550

pentium 4, 512 ram

lol

i wonder what can we do with this 'garbage'

Andreas:

With a broken motherboard, there's not really a whole heck of a lot you can do with it. I personally would shelf it for parts and pieces if needed (e.g. Drives, Spare wiring, replacement processor/RAM). However, A broken screen is another story *cue an Adam Savage-esque segway into blueprint room*

Depending on how much muscle and power said laptop has, You can use it in almost any "set it and forget it" situation. For Example, Plug a USB drive or other large hard drive into it, hardwire it into a network, and load FreeNAS (A barebones linux port available at http://freenas.org/) into it to make it a Network Storage device. The nice thing about FreeNAS is that you can use any VGA or S-Video monitor (Two laptop standards, your mileage may vary, etc etc) to install and configure it's DHCP IP address, and then once that's complete, it is completely configurable over the network via any browser (I've even configured it from my iPod).

If you don't need network storage, you can load a Media Center version of Windows or even Linux onto it and use it as, well, a home media center. This particular solution requires a bit of processing power and a lot of hard drive space, but it can be done fairly cheaply and easily. A $40 wireless keyboard/mouse combo from Lenovo (The N5901, if Memory serves) will get you wireless, a $30 dongle gets you HDTV (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815260023) and from there you stick it on a chill pad, wire it in behind your TV, and set it up for a "kiosk" or "Media Center" mode, so that it boots into media center when turned on. Bam, Instant Media Center.

Either way, these are just two "hands-off" solutions. You can use it with a smaller display to show RSS feeds; possibly a music box hidden behind a wall and wired to speakers. You can use it as a charging station for USB devices, or even as an HTTP server (Start your own website!) The list goes on, and I leave it to you to decide what to do.

Rein:

30-60 Minute auto-shutdown sounds like it may be an overheating problem, or it may be a RAM Problem. Have you run MemTest86+ on it? If it passes, have you checked the thermal paste and CPU fan/Sink Assembly? Are they dust-free and functioning properly? Is there enough thermal paste? Is there too much? Is the airflow through the case good?

There are a plethora of problems that can be attributed to a 30-60 minute shut down time. See if you can narrow down the problem any, and I can help you decide what to do with it from there.