The refreshed MacBook holds few surprises, resembling a Star Trek teleportation mix-up between the prior 13″ white MacBook and the current 13″ MacBook Pro. It retains a white polycarbonate case much like its predecessor while adopting a subset of the Pro’s components — CPU and GPU, glass trackpad, Mini DisplayPort, and the long-lived but sealed battery. Internally the system is still a maze of different-sized Torx, Phillips and tri-wing screws, but they do report this latest revision to be easier to dismantle for repair.

More novel inside and out is the new Magic Mouse, which early reports suggest may finally redeem Apple’s eleven year train wreck of mice. There’s not much to see on the bottom half — it’s a typical wireless mouse consisting of batteries, laser tracker and a Bluetooth chip. The top is something to behold though, with nearly the entire surface encrusted in capacitive sensors capable of gestural input. It resembles a miniature version of this electrostatic interface we saw in April.

No teardowns of the new iMacs, Mac mini or Time Capsule have taken place yet, but it’s surely just a matter of time. Even Velociraptors need to eat and sleep.

Update: 27″ iMac teardown added. Rawr!

[Viktor's] laptop needed a new battery; he had the trade off between carrying around a cheap but heavy sealed lead acid (SLA) battery, or buying an expensive but light Li-Ion battery. Figuring his old laptop was pretty heavy already, and having an unused SLA available, re-purposing it for his laptop wouldn’t be too much of a hassle. Using a boost converter he built out of a custom dip MAX668, he is able to output the necessary 5 amps required. An MC 34161 voltage monitor chip is planned for future revisions, but he’s currently running it just fine. Check out some of his other cool hacks on Karosium.

Related: MSI Wind extended battery

Though not from scratch, [Avbrand] integrated a powerful set of tools into his Subaru station wagon. The system was compiled from off the shelf electronics, such as a Compaq notebook, 3G USB modem, touch screen, and an assortment of other peripherals. It is based around Windows XP, though most of the carputer-specific applications, such as backup camera integration, Google Maps – based car tracking, and automatic volume control had to be custom coded by [Avbrand] himself. Perhaps the single most impressive and useful feature of the system is synchronization with highway traffic cameras. The system streams video of segments of the highway before [Avbrand] gets to them, allowing him to make more informed navigational choices. He documents it pretty well on his website.

If you’ve ever tried compile a linux kernel yourself you know the headache of configuring and taking care of dependencies. KernelCheck makes this a point and click process for debian based linux distributions such as Ubuntu. You can use it to compile and install any 2.6.* stable kernel as well as the bleeding edge. KernelCheck even offers custom compilation options such as including kernel patches or rolling in proprietary video drivers. A tutorial (PDF) is also provided so you can see what you’re getting yourself into.

[via Web Upd8]

Popular Mechanics has a detailed how-to on diy ruggedization of common portable electronics such as laptops, cameras, and cellphones. There is video of a laptop surviving an eight foot fall due to the tennis balls, pipe insulation, and weather stripping they’ve added. Its not just shock resistant, they’ve used a two-part compound marketed for making custom molded earplugs to make the laptop water resistant.

[Matt] wrote in to tell us about this project. He plans on travelling with his MSI Wind and wanted better audio recording capabilities. He decided to install an additional microphone and a preamp. He made a custom preamp and wired it directly to the motherboard. The microphone was then mounted in the laptop screen. The second microphone is placed opposite of the first, about 18cm apart which [Matt] claims gives it a binaural effect. We think that this might just classify as stereo though. Wouldn’t you have to seperate them with a barrier or dampening device for binaural? It doesn’t really matter though, stereo mics are a great addition to the MSI Wind, and he did it very well. He does point out that it picks up a lot of noise though. There’s always room for improvement.

We’ve all seen a million digital picture frames. Usually, people use an old outdated laptop or something. [Quinten] just sent in this one he made using an Eeepc 701. Being the first one available, the smallest both in terms of screen size and storage, they are available pretty cheap. There’s nothing amazingly groundbreaking here, just yanking all the parts out of the Eeepc and mounting them, nicely, in a wooden frame. [Quinten] did a great job getting everything in, with the least amount of space wasted. It strikes us that He has made a super cheap tablet conversion, he’s only missing the touch screen. We’ve seen Eeepc tablet conversions, but they seemed to have much more difficult to construct cases.

[Rob] sent in his Dell mini 9 3G install. He bought the Dell without the 3G option, but found that he really wanted it. He installed a mini pcie bracket and found a sim connector that matched the specs he needed. Apparently they use one that it rare as it uses the first pin to indicate whether or not there’s a card loaded. He pulled the mini pcie 3G card from a cheap USB adapter. After soldering it all in place and firing up OS X, he was able to connect, without issue. He says the reception wasn’t great, so he’ll need to add an antenna. This is similar to the process seen on the Acer aspire one 3G hack. Since you’re already in there, you might as well add a GPS while you’re at it.

TechRepublic and iFixit partnered to teardown Dell’s flagship notebook, the Adamo. The Adamo is positioned to compete directly with Apple’s MacBook Air. The Dell crams a lot of technology into a very thin frame and they use a clever locking system for the backplate to hide any screws. The built in battery has a longer life than the Air and an SSD comes stock. The team points out that the Windows logo is etched on the backside instead of the standard ugly stickers; apparently this took quite a bit of teeth-pulling to get approved. Check out the full photo gallery which includes the fetish packaging and comparison shots to the Air and Dell Mini 9.

[Ben Heck] has just completed one of his more unique laptop game consoles. This time around it’s a Commodore 64, which he’s been attempting since 2006. Recently he scrapped everything and started fresh on what turned out to be the fastest build yet. While it certainly looks similar to his other laptops, he put in a lot of effort to give it the appearance of an 80’s computer from the beige color to the texture. He used an original C64C motherboard since it was the final and smallest revision and coupled that with an original keyboard. A 1541-III-DTV allows use of an SD card as a floppy device. Just drag any disk image onto the card and it’s ready to go. Check out a video of it in use below.

[Eddie], who made the Mac Logo LCD Mod, had posted a step by step tutorial on how to do it yourself. He basically just fully disassembled his MacBook, popped out the logo, put one from an iBook or Powerbook, then mounted a small LCD back there and routed it into a USB port internally. He says the extra electronics cause a tiny bulge in the monitor casing. We wonder if this couldn’t lead to stress damage on the main LCD in the long run.

[thanks Koray]

In another installment of her ongoing efforts to mod the Acer Aspire 1, [tnkgrl] has added eSATA capabilities. During the hard drive upgrade she did, she used the spare PATA connection, leaving an SATA connection free. This time she has gone in and extended it to be accessible outside the case. To do that, she scavenged an eSATA connector from a desktop and simply wired it into the connections on the motherboard. She then mounted it flush as seen in the picture above.  In the past she’s covered adding RAM, internal Bluetooth and the hard drive upgrade.

Installing OSX on commodity PC hardware has advanced a lot since the early days of OSx86 when Apple switched to Intel. With the advent of netbooks, a new target platform has emerged; one that doesn’t have an official Apple equivalent. The small subset of models means that it’s easy to find someone else that has the same machine as you, but it still takes some forum walking to bring all the pieces together. Gizmodo has done this and compiled a comprehensive guide for the Dell Mini 9. The Mini 9 is a very nice machine and according to Boing Boing Gadgets’ chart, one of the most compatible with OSX. Earlier this week you could purchase a new one for just $200.

For Gizmodo’s install, they used a Leopard retail DVD with [Type11]’s bootloader. They’re breaking the EULA, but at least it’s not piracy. They had to use both a DVD drive and a USB hard drive because device recognition was flakey. Despite this, the actual install process doesn’t appear to be too difficult. They say all the hardware works, “The Mini 9 is a beautiful OS X machine.” Check out this Hackit to learn about netbook OSX experiences from other Hack a Day readers.

[tnkgrl] has concluded her Sony Vaio P by adding GSM support. We covered the switch to XP earlier, but this should work on Vista too. The Vaio P is sold in the US with support for Verizon’s EVDO wireless broadband, but it uses the same hardware as the European model that uses GSM. This is possible because of the the Qualcomm Gobi radio module. To get GSM support, you trick the VZAccess Manager into loading a different firmware than the stock EVDO. The difficult part is that the Vaio P doesn’t come with a SIM card slot, so you’ll have to solder in your own. When you’ve got the computer reassembled, just change VZAccess Manager to use your carrier.

UPDATE: Wired has an article on the Gobi chipset.

Sony recently started to shipping the VAIO P don’t-call-it-a-netbook netbook. It comes stock with 2GB of RAM, which means it’s not eligible for Microsoft’s XP ultra low cost pc licensing. Hackers wanting to exorcise Vista have run into a few issues. After doing her unboxing photoshoot, [tnkgrl] wrote a guide for replacing Vista with XP on the Vaio P. She used the Universal Extractor to pop open the driver downloads and remove the Vista check. This got the WWAN radio and GPS working in XP. The only casualty was the volume and mute buttons are no longer working. You can see an annotated image verifying all the components here.