Just bagged myself a free comp - Now what to do with it!

[Desmo]

Bumped in to my mate at the weekend as he was walking out of Comet. He'd just smashed the screen on his old laptop and had bought a new one. He asked me to recover some files off it so I popped his HDD in to my laptop and copied the files on the a USB drive. Asked him what he wanted to do with the old laptop and he said bin it so I asked to keep it as I could nab some parts.

I don't know the full spec yet but do know it's got 2GB ram and 250GB HDD. My current laptop only has a 120GB hard drive.

I'm thinking of using it as a silent HTPC of sorts. Can plug it straight in to the TV and go from there, controlling it via VNC/RDP with Win7 maybe?

Was also thinking of putting the 250GB HDD in my laptop and dual booting Ubuntu/Windows properly. Whilst virtualising Windows does work, I think dual booting is better overall. This means the 120GB HDD from mine can go in to the HTPC. Not masses of space, but enough to drop a few films on as and when.

Anything else I should or could do?