A desktop made of Air

August 17, 2010 By 19 Comments

Deskbook Air Guts

[Bart] managed to get his hands on a Macbook Air for free. The catch was that the monitor hinge was broken and the laptop wasn’t in too great of a condition. Rather than scrapping it or using it as a cake cutter, he decided to turn it into a keyboard PC. By removing the internals he was able to fit all of the components with minimal modification. [Bart] has added a few things to make it a functional desktop, such as integrating a USB hub under the the keyboard and fitted the keyboard with a Magic Trackpad. As with any great hack, the project is still in progress, and we can’t wait to see the final touches as it comes together.

Filed Under: laptops hacks, macs hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Xbox 360 Laptop more laptop-y than ever

March 16, 2010 By 29 Comments

[TheTwoJ] and his friend built a laptop-form-factor Xbox 360. Their extensively documented process was inspired by [Ben Heckendorn's] work. The result is a brick when folded up but a good-looking (albeit loud with 8 fans) gaming rig. There’s everything you would expect; LCD screen, integrated WiFi, camera, optical drive, and a full keyboard. These poor saps seem to have spent a portion of their student loan on the build but we understand how easy it is to let your budget get out of hand. They’re trying to recoup through eBay auction.

Take a look at the walk through after the break.  If you’ve got the spare dough, you can try your hand at this with our three part series on building an Xbox 360 laptop.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: xbox hacks Tagged With: , ,

Simple laptop conversion

January 22, 2010 By 16 Comments

[Jakob] sent in his method of dealing with broken laptop hinges. Broken hinges are a plague. We have no less than 4 laptops lying around that are beyond repair with broken hinges. Some are just propped up against things, some have had box hinges glued to them and some are just waiting to die slowly from non use. [Jakob] has a nice neat conversion where he basically made a tablet. We’ve seen that before as well as picture frames. His version, while being quite possibly easier than most of the others, has a neat design aspect. An extended lip at the bottom fits in a groove in a plastic slab. All in one PC becomes a tablet in an instant. Not too shabby for a broken laptop. It looks like he needs to pop a touch screen kit on it though.

Filed Under: laptops hacks Tagged With: ,

Ps3 laptop courtesy of Ben Heck

October 21, 2009 By 16 Comments

ps3s_hero1

[Ben Heck] may be the coolest person ever (take that [Adam Savage]). You would think that after producing so many laptop versions of gaming consoles he would grow tired or we would be bored of them. But no! We love each and every new production – including his latest laptop-ified Ps3. Not too much in the terms of ‘new’ comes from his latest article, but it does reaffirm some things including: why make what you can buy, cheap foam sheet should be purchased by the ton, and use the screws from an overheated Xbox 360 when you lose the Ps3 originals. Oh, and [Adam] we were just kidding, you know we will always love you. Check out a video after the break.

[Via Ps3Mods]

[Read more...]

Filed Under: home entertainment hacks, playstation hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Laptop running on a sealed lead acid battery

September 20, 2009 By 24 Comments

steupup_box

[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

Filed Under: laptops hacks, repair hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,

Ruggedize your not-so-rugged portables

August 25, 2009 By 13 Comments

waterlaptop-470-0909

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.

Filed Under: Cellphone Hacks, digital cameras hacks, laptops hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Second hard drive in a Macbook pro

August 23, 2009 By 22 Comments

Picture 4 (Custom)

[Reid] wrote in to show us how to add a second hard drive to his Macbook Pro. He found that he hardly ever used his DVD drive, so sacrificed it in favor of added storage. What he found was that it had a proprietary adapter that he was unable to find for sale anywhere. Making an adapter may seem like a pretty simple hack, but this could save some people considerable time. Its also worth noting that upgrading the firmware got him an 18% speed increase, so don’t ignore those updates. We don’t see too many mac hacks around here, you may recall the mac tablet hacks and the logo monitor.

Filed Under: macs hacks, peripherals hacks Tagged With: , , ,
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