Making money from recycled computers

Ever seen those $50 laptops on classified ad sites.. the ones with 133MHz processors and specs that make you wonder what you, or anyone else could do with them? Wallflower is a company whose business model was built around such laptops. Founders Mitch Kahn and Gordon Clyne started out by buying these cheapo laptops and creating digital picture frames with them. Now that's a cool idea (of course, I dont think it's worth paying $800 for a picture frame) and they were successful enough to graduate to buying proper new components for their products which now feature Wi-Fi networking so that you can drag and drop new pictures to your frames from your desktop. I wonder if I could dismantle a cheapo laptop myself and create my own moving digital picture frame...hmm...now that would be a project.

If you want a digital picture frame for your home, check out Ceiva which sells them for $125 (with a monthly subscription for pictures).