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http://www.jave.de/aero/44to40...
http://www.zenspider.com/~pwil...
http://repair4laptop.org/disas...

A similar story has been at SlashDot already at November: 2010: Bloom Laptop Designed For Easy Disassembly. Though these projects are still not available in the shops. In the meantime you can have a look at these free do-it-yourself disassembly guides for laptops and notebooks.

You may collect some more HDDs and arrange them into a domino game. See Youtube for videos if you need some tips. Repair4HardDisk has a collection of modding ideas for old or dead hard disk drives, for example making a clock from the platters. Here is a resource of modding ideas for USB sticks, too.

1/ Turn them into additional monitors. Use http://www.maxivista.com/ 2/ What about an Arcade Game machine? Asteroids, PacMac, Space Invader, etc. Use Mame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAME 3/ Digital picture frames, as already proposed. Use http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_picture_frame.html, but please be ecology friendly.

Yup. http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_picture_frame.html

Turn them into picture frames. http://repair4laptop.org/notebook_picture_frame.html

Do you want to be on the safe side and have some fun, too? Just make your custom DPF and install Linux on it. Here are some DIY instructions to make a digital picture frame from an old laptop or notebook. And here is a survey of Linux used on selfmade digital photo frames

I suggest to take an older and therefore cheaper ThinkPad from the X series, e.g. X31 or X41 models. They are build very strongly. Though in case they get broken, the manufacturer itself provides free hardware maintenance manuals online, there are many other free repair and upgrade guides for ThinkPad laptops as well. The manufacturer Lenovo/IBM has offices all around the world. If you can effort a newer model you can even get a three years warranty for many parts of the world. Instead of replacing the internal hard disk drive with a solid state disk I recommend to put all the data on an external USB thumbdrive. This way the data can be savely stored away from the laptop. You should consider to encrypt the data on the USB drive as well as on the hard drive. ThinkPads even offer a BIOS option to achieve encryption. If you can't live without a DVD drive you need an additional external DVD drive, because the X series doesn't feature an internal DVD drive.

There are at least two hardware modifications aka moddings for the ASUS Eee PC mentioned at Repair4Laptop. One explains how to add an internal USB Bluetooth port to the sub-notebook without affecting the built-in wireless or using the empty mini PCIe card slot. The other describes how to install an internal 3G Card.

This is not the first steampunk laptop. Besides this approach there is a special retro modding technique: converting a laptop or notebook into a retro typewriter.

Maybe you can build a laptop stand yourself, they are easy to build and usually cheap. To give you some ideas, there are some guides about making custom laptop and notebook stands from different materials at Repair4Laptop.

It's much fun to own a custom-made laptop, but it's not necessary to pay one million dollar for it. This overview of do-it-yourself laptops and notebooks gives you some ideas how to build a personalized portable computer from scratch. If you don't want to start from scratch, you may use a so-called barebone or white-box laptop as a beginning.

There is an interesting overview of guides to make a do-it-yourself laptop at Repair4Laptop. If you don't want to build it completely from scratch you can consider to make it as a so-called barebone or white box laptop. Barebones are also featured in a separate section of the overview.

There are many guides to create your Make Project available for free. So why bother to buy the book. For example: here are guides to "create a [homemade portable] digital audio jukebox" and here is a list of tutorials explaining how to build a "wireless network range extender".

Besides the parts you often need repair instructions. Here are free repair tutorials and upgrade guides for laptops and notebooks from almost any manufacturer.

Here are guides and tutorials about building a custom selfmade laptop or notebook. You may also find some hints to make a so-called barebone or white-box laptop there.

Here are some tips for theft and loss protection for laptops and notebooks. This article is dedicated to Linux users, but some of the tips are applicable to other operating systems as well. Some of the techniques work for other portable electronic equipment (PDAs, mobile phones, et. al.), too. But note: some devices which are offered to provide physical security can be by-passed easily. For example there are different approaches for hacking laptop and notebook cable locks.

Just in case you want a custom-made model, here are some links to do-it-yourself instructions for selfmade laptop and notebook bags and backpacks. Currently only three HOWTOs but I am confident there will be more soon.

Because laptops sales will outperform desktop sales soon, laptop and notebook moddings should occure in this top ten list, too. Often they are more difficult to modify and need special modding techniques for laptops. To me my weirdest laptop hacks are these fun moddings: laptops made from bread and chocolate as well as virtual hacks (some of them have been slashdotted already).

Because laptops sales will outperform desktop sales soon, laptop and notebook moddings should occure in this top ten list, too. Often they are more difficult to modify and need special modding techniques for laptops. To me my weirdest laptop hacks are these fun moddings: laptops made from bread and chocolate as well as virtual hacks (some of them have been slashdotted already).

Because laptops sales will outperform desktop sales soon, laptop and notebook moddings should occure in this top ten list, too. Often they are more difficult to modify and need special modding techniques for laptops. To me my weirdest laptop hacks are these fun moddings: laptops made from bread and chocolate as well as virtual hacks (some of them have been slashdotted already).

To make your own do-it-yourself usb stick using these tutorials is not that difficult. See for example this HowTo: Homer USB Drive.

There are many more guides about building your custom made LCD projector around. From my experience it can be difficult to find them with Google. But here is a starting point for more and free practical guides to do-it-yourself DIY LCD projectors. There are also guides for building projectors from old dia projectors and tutorials to build overhead projectors yourself. You may even use a display from an otherwise broken and unusable laptop.

I would like to build my own laptop, too. But it seems difficult to research this topic at Google. Are there any other resources besides Make Yourself a Laptop or Notebook: BareBones and DIY Machines?

Selfmade digital picture frames have become quite common, for example you may try this survey about: How to Make a Digital Picture Frame from an Old Laptop or Notebook.

To spoil a desktop keyboard is bad, but damaging a laptop or notebook keyboard is even more bad, because often it's not that easy to get their keyboards out for a serious cleaning. Here are some take apart instructions for laptops and notebooks including pictures. There are tips and tricks for keyboard cleaning. Or just in case you need to re-paint it, there are appropriate HOWTOs.

Here are some more laptop and notebook moddings, e.g. a laptop made from gingerbread.