Play games, have fun, use them as aides in study, as a diary/calendars, some basic tinkering skills, with ad-hoc wifi even micro networks for voice and chat - that is off the top of my head. You will be surprised how little computing power and stable internet you need to be a full digital citizen of the world.
A phone line, 100mhz pentium and 8mb of RAM did it for me in 1998 :)
A phone line, 100mhz pentium and 8mb of RAM did it for me in 1998 :)