Macintosh makes a lot of wonderful pieces of technology, but they do not make a tablet. Pictured above is the Modbook, the closest you can currently get to a Mac tablet. Though not officially built by Apple, they are an Apple Premier Developer and that isn’t too shabby.
Several people have taken it upon themselves to fashion Mac tablets of their own, varying from extremely professional looking finishes down to duct tape and wire. Lets take a look at some of the more popular ones out there.
OCAU member [Bismar] was in the market for an e-book reader, but all of his commercial options were too expensive. He decided to build one himself, and what he came up with is the Tabeee MK1, an e-book reader made from a 7″ Eee PC, a touchscreen, and a custom case.
The project is far from completion, still in the midst of its first objective: building the case. [Bismar] cut an old Lian Li case for the aluminum base, then made sure the motherboard from the Eee fit properly. The next major step was bending and cutting an acrylic sheet to form the exterior of the case. He hit a few snags bending the sheet, but forum members offered some ideas on how to do this effectively. The project is still rolling along, and we’ll be sure to show you the Tabeee MK1 when it is finished.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wVhW6a9i7Y&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
Jkkmobile has just posted their touchscreen hack for an Eee PC 900, and it looks great. Installation of this kit is pretty easy, just fit the panel to the screen, connect the controller to the USB lines, close it up, calibrate it, and you’re done. The controller board is placed on top of the WiFi card. Jkkmobile has informed us of touchscreens for older Eee PCs before, but this is one of the first we’ve seen for a 900+ model. The post lists a few sources for touchscreen kits, but no word on which one they used.
For $99, Apple will happily sell you a slick USB superdrive (aka DVD burner) that only works with the MacBook Air. [tnkgrl] swapped out the USB-IDE interface with a generic $9 unit to make it work with everything else. The generic board required a few mods: relocating the crystal oscillator along with the amputation of its daughter-board that carried an external power connector, usb connector and some caps.
[Andrew] sent in something we’ve been considering for our 17 inch Dell. He squeezed a 100GB PATA notebook drive into the spare space in his Compaq laptop. He used a USB interface to provide the connection and added a toggle switch to conserve power when he doesn’t need the drive spun up. The mod would be even nicer if you added a keyboard activation switch like [sprite_tm]’s keyboard light.
Some people are really picky about their trackpads. [John] posted a guide on retrofitting a Synaptics pad in place of the newer, but less user friendly ALPS touchpad/stick combo used in the Dell Inspiron 8200. On the opposite end, [C. Järnåker], loves laptop keyboards enough to mod them for use on his desktop machine.
Back in November we asked what you would do with an old unused laptop. If you have an old laptop that’s not doing much more than gathering dust, chances are you could put it to better use. You could sell it, but you probably wouldn’t get too much for it. Donating or recycling can also get it out your hair, but if you’d like to try something different, read on for some ideas.
