My little idea...

So, it's hardly little, at least I don't think it will turn out that way...

Here's my thought. I would have something on my wall that would be like a digital picture frame, but bigger. And this thing would do a few different things. Here's what you would see:
If the computer is active you would see a dashboard open and that would have some widgets like:
-Weather
-Traffic
-Sports scores
-Calendar
-Countdowns
-iTunes (More on this in a bit)
-iTunes lyrics

And if it is not active it would show a screensaver. Now the idea is for this thing to have wifi and so it would grab pictures for the screensaver and basically be like a pretty big digital picture frame. Basically meaning this thing would have a one-up on them besides just being bigger. It would grab the pictures for it from a network shared folder. So you could change the pictures on the slideshow with ease. You could do it from any computer in the house and wouldn't need SD cards or anything.

As for the other function, well, like I was saying, it could control my stereo. I'd have the iTunes widget (perhaps something more) and that would send my songs to my stereo speakers across the room wirelessly. I have a few ideas for how to do this...

Now, this thing doesn't need to run photoshop or anything, so it could be a fairly basic computer. I was thinking along the lines of a G3 iMac. But the only thing is, could I disassemble an iMac? Could I keep the whole project clean after having done that? I expect a small box on the floor or beneath my bed somewhere controlling this thing but that can be easily hidden, I'm sure. A laptop would make more sense space-wise, yes, but I'm talking about cost effective. I'll need to keep the computer under $100.

This thing would do a lot more than I made it out to sound like eventually, but this would be version 1.0.

My concerns so far are what I can do with the G3 iMac. How deep is the screen element itself? I don't necessarily want the thing to come off the wall more than a couple inches but if it could save me a lot of money, I would sure let it... Also, once I disassemble the screen from the rest and want to put the rest somewhere, how compact can I make that?

Thanks in advance for any help or input!

 

CPU would be on the ground somewhere. I'm not too concerned about that.

Could you run a video out to an LCD monitor from a G3 iMac?