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Wooden Computer Accessories
polyp2000 writes "It's always interesting to read about case-mods, but this company has a novel twist, for nature loving geeks. Maybe even the perfect accessory for a wooden case mod. Swedx do a nice line in wooden monitors, keyboards, and some sweet looking wooden mice in a selection of different woods."
Computers for the Ahmish.
After years of your computer giving you wood, you can finally give back.
Now my pc will burn with the rest off my house! Aggggg!
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Definitely not the case and/or setup for those overclockers out there :) especially with heat output getting real close to 100W...
drunk chemists
As if most Slashdot readers truly need more wood when sitting before a computer ;)
Didn't Jack Gallo, publisher of Blush Magazine, have a wood-cased LCD flatpanel monitor on his desk?
Why yes, he did.
In like 1998.
And there's always competition.
Sure, they may like accessories from cut-down trees.
Me, I'm still waiting for my authentic ivory mouse and tiger fur coated keyboard.
yes, that was a joke
webpage
Cut down a tree (renewable resource) versus mining bauxite (nonrenewable resource). The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
For the longest time, the beige box was the height of fashion in the computer world. Everything was the same shade of beige, too. Printers, monitors, cases, keyboards, mice, EVERYTHING. And everything was boxy, too. Rounding the corners on your box was considered daring. Then some bright boy came up with the idea of white boxes. Then the natural corollary, the black box. Then Apple came out with the iMac and suddenly we had six new colors. And we had blobs as well as boxes.
Of course, we have had case-modders from the get go, and some innovative 'concept' designs have been displayed at trade shows, but in the mainstream, the physical design of computers and accessories has been boring.
I would love to be able to choose from a wide style of cases for my computer. Computer case design has been unobtrusive and homogenous up till now to please the major buyers, corporations. Now, with many smaller form-factor motherboards, and more people with some kind of fashion sense buying computers for the home, there will probably be an explosion in case and accessory design.
I'd love to see some nice retro stuff. Cases and accessories that looked like a 1950s wooden stereo, or a brushed aluminum AirStream trailer, or made to look like a sculpture would probably sell well. How about a tiny computer with only USB and FireWire (or maybe BlueTooth or something like it but faster, to do away with cords.) for expansion that comes with matching 'collectable' accessories. Companies could manufacture snap on covers: Star Wars or LoTR for us geeks, sports memorablia for the average joe, unicorns and big eyed ragamuffins for the ladies, and so forth.
The day of the beige box is hopefully done. I for one welcome our new, more stylish computers & accessories.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And there are also analog wooden computers.
The key of having enough of a renewable resource is getting people to value it in the first place. With the $15 I pay to cut down a Christmas tree, the forest service plants several more. (And that is in fact exactly what they do with the money).
Picture: A post-apocalyptic world, now grown lush and green again.
"Father, what kind of animal is that?"
"That's a qwerty, my son. If you know how to skin and prepare one, you can use almost every part of it to make a keyboard."
"Almost? What's left over?"
"The scrowlock and the cisrek. Hell if I know what they're good for."
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Building something, anything, out of wood is a very natural way of doing it. There are a number of species on this planet that cut down trees to build structures, humans are not the only ones.
Wood feels nice, sounds nice, and looks nice. It is renewable. And you're forgetting WHERE this tree is cut down, is it in an ancient forest with 300-year old trees, or in a homegrown backyard lot?
"I'm nature-loving."
Then why not do it the natural way?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Pine, oak, ash, beech, maple, etc., are all "farmed" woods suitable for mice that don't require any rainforests to be stripped. Even apple and cherry wood from old orchards is suitable for small items like these, and would be very cool.
If you want some exotic rainforest hardwoods instead, there's no need to "strip log" them. Selective cutting preserves the ecostructure quite nicely. Clearcutting is a sign of bad government management of resources. It's easy enough to brand "eco-friendly" lumber to make sure you aren't buying mouse made from clearcut timber.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It had a wooden case,
a wooden mouse
a wooden keyboard
and a wooden cpu
and it wooden go!
The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Empty soda can.... about 17 g
Ennyah ATX case... 5 kg
Knowing your case can be recycled into about 294 cans of jolt cola... priceless
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
actually, if you cut the tree correctly, the stump will live and produce yet another tree. Only the part you cut away dies (and even that could be coaxed into becoming its own tree).
I propagate roses all the time in this fashion. It's called "asexual reproduction" (something with which many slashdotters are invariably familiar...).
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
For some reason remembering seeing the Apple I in the Smithsonian was the first thing I thought of when i thought of a wooden computer case. Have a look Smithsonian Apple I
-Alex
I tried out a wooden monitor once, but the picture was just too grainy.
Agreed... old fisher tube based amplifiers / radio receivers often had wooden cases. My current receiver is circa late 70s, it's PS is rated for well into the 300watt spectrum... it doesn't catch fire. Both are passively cooled with linier power supplies if i'm not mistaken. Your PC with it's switching power supply shouldn't be much of a problem. It has a fuse, your house has a breaker. Not a problem.
I'll submit that wood is more of an insolater then steel or aluminium... and is less likely to be good at passive cooling... lets say in the event that your fan fails.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Well, here's what I don't understand. (And please don't take it as a flame or anything.) Why would anyone want an ugly transparent contraption?
The innards of my computer are a twisty maze of cables, all alike. Between the hard drives, two CD drives, Audigy 2 Platinum front tray, case fans, etc, it's one big mess of cables.
Not that it would be any better without the cables. It's a colour cacophony of red PCBs, blue PCBs, traditionalist green PCBs, aluminum heatsink on the CPU, copper heatsink on the graphics card, and whatever else.
Now if I were to also add some lit fans or neon lights, as seems to be the custom, then it would only get an even uglier colour cacophony.
What's that supposed to look like? A cheap circus tent? A bad acid trip? A sad clown on a really bad makup day? A terror attack on a paint warehouse?
And the real question: why on Earth would I want to look at that every day? Also: why would I want the others to see that?
Now I can see haow that would have a novelty factor in the beginning, and can appreciate at least the work of those who personally modded their own case. (Even if to a butt-ugly result.) But... you know... it's been some years already. The novelty ought to have worn off, and you can already buy that kind of cases mass-produced.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Because I mounted a small power supply, motherboard, and a hard drive in a FedEx box, as an easier-to-carry alternative to a 1U case (nice and flat, but way too wide and deep) or a typical desktop/tower case (too, well... box-like). As an added bonus, it's less likely to get stolen because it doesn't exactly look like a computer. Though I do have to be careful any time FedEx comes to pick up a package. {grin}
http://alternatives.rzero.com/