GRYNX is featuring a step-by-step article on building a WallTop . What is a WallTop? It’s a junk laptop converted to an intelligent picture frame. Intriguing, no?

So, I had this laptop booting on a CD with XPE (Windows XP Preboot Environment) made with BartPE to provide me with the log files from my servers. That was basically it. But it soon took up too much space on my desk and ended up in a corner where it was never used or looked at. But hey – why not take this old laptop, break it down to it’s pieces, mount it into a frame and hang it in the living room showing a slideshow?? It’s definitely silent as it doesn’t have an hard drive. Well, first I was sceptical myself. Power cable and network cable would be difficult to hide, and drilling an hole into my neighbours living room wouldn’t solve anything. Hmm, but let’s go wireless and replace the original power cable with an thin cable in the same colour as the wall!!

So I did.

There’s a stack of ancient (but working, as far as I know) laptops in the server room at my office. I’ve been told I can have them if I want.