2. A Heater: if you find it a bit too weird to curl up with your laptop, then you’ll love this one: Your computer can be used to heat a room. The more gadgets and peripherals your computer has, the better the outcome. See picture (courtesy of PCWorld) for details.

3. A Data Server: ok, so for some reason you find that there are not enough servers out there and you just have to have one more – yours. You can use it to host your files and data to be shared amongst your friends.

4. A Proxy Server: What, you don’t want a data server? Well, how about a proxy server or a circumnavigation site? With one of these babies running in your basement you can actually get through almost any censorship software.

5. An Accurate Clock: unless you’ve got an atomic watch or clock about the house, you will always be lagging a few milliseconds a day – imagine the minutes you will have lost in say, 50 years. The solution? Turn that laptop into an internet-connected clock (there are manyscreensavers you can download that will display a clock) and make sure it auto-updates itself.

6. Become a Scientist: Well then, at least contribute to the science world by joining a distributed computing network. There are organizations out there that are fighting serious diseases or searching for intelligent beings in outer space and haven’t succeeded due to the lack of some extra RAM. Who knows? Maybe your computer could give that one surge in computing power and result in a breakthrough.

Before we forget, though, we’d like to leave you with this message:

“If you want to use your computer to do some of the brilliant things that are suggested above, then go ahead – by all means do so. But, we will not take any responsibility in the case of fires (1 &2), loss of data etc. (3), your being fired or kicked out of school (4), oversleeping (5), something goes wrong and you trigger a massive outbreak or an alien invasion(6).”

Now, proceed…