Oldish laptop (ES15 AMD Radeon) 3GB, slow HDD, but solid Acer hardware. Wifi connects, Linux (Fatdog) loads/runs in ram and ... isn't so bad. Usable, but some web pages such as yahoo finance are sluggish to load/scroll.
Installed Fatdog also onto a desktop i5, nvidia, SSD, 8GB, hard wired (ethernet) 'server'. On both systems installed tigervnc (vncserver, vncviewer) and on the server ...
Xephyr :2 & # start another X in the background
PIDofX=$! # record its PID
sleep 2 # allow time for X to start
DISPLAY=:2 vncserver :3 & # start vnc on display 3 (vnc port 5903)
DISPLAY=:3 cwm & # start cwm window manager
kill $PIDofX # we're done with that X
and connect to that on the laptop (wifi connected)
vncviewer 192.168.1.4:5903 # I've set the servers IP as being reserved in the Virgin hub admin
... and start chrome within that ... and its REALLY quick. F8 (settings) and using Tight compression, level 2, jpeg level 8, and the bandwidth being used is around 2MB (16Mbit) when a lot of screen changes are occurring, much lower when just browsing (lemonfool/whatever).
Basically the powerful server is downloading and rendering web pages quickly and throwing those screens at the laptop that doesn't have to do much more than just load those screens into the display and handle the keyboard/mouse (touchpad). Which combined is quicker than if the laptop uses its own browser to download and render/load web pages. And another family member can still use the desktop system at the same time, other than the initial loading (Xephyr, that's killed) there's near no indication of me also using that box via my laptop, other than a bit more cpu activity. Another nice feature is that you can disconnect, return later and re-vnc back into the server to be back where you left off, old tmux style (ssh into servers).
Sound is a issue though, as If I'm watching a youtube on the laptop and someone on the desktop is also doing similar, then they hear both youtube sound tracks. So I just turn off sound in chrome on the laptop (settings, privacy and security, site settings, additional content settings, sound)
I basically use the laptop as a couch device, and it now runs as quick as the desktop. As does libreoffice load/run much quicker if I use the servers version. With the laptop distant from the wifi hub I still get internet download speed tests of around 135Mbs....
PS there is a VirtualGL addition you can add to that, so it renders 3D (Blender, SuperTuxKart racing ... type programs) and injects that into X, where you can get a decent (usable) frame rate.