How to use a laptop with no screen

My laptop broke. So i thought of throwing it away before I realized the obvious in making a simple server from it. The most usable reason for me to turn it into a server was to be able to use the computational power to run synthesizers wich my secondary computer could not manage. This is the two steps i made.

install ssh

Since i already had ubuntu installed from the beginning. The only thing i really needed to do to convert it to some kind of server was to install ssh:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Then to use the computer all I needed to do on the client side was

ssh (ip to the computer) -X

(-X is to be able to run graphical applications as nautilus, gedit, och google-chrome [but to be onest, to run google chrome over forwarded x is a bit overkill] )

wake on lan

It would be possible to keep the computer turned on all the time, but because my computer makes a lot of noise i rather turn it off sporadically. Since my laptop has its powerbutton under the lid, I figured out that it would be most practical to be able to boot it from somewere else. And thats how i came up with the wake up on lan. For my lenovo T61 the wake on lan feature was enabled by default. I got the network card name from my router.. (format 00:00:00:00:00 something) and then i use the awesome command powerwake when i need to start the computer. Works like magic

powerwake (mac-addr)