John Lennon has made an interesting song about this behaviour: "You can wear a collar and a tie, one thing you can't hide, is when you're crippled inside".
There is a short survey of free applications for bicycles at TuxMobil. Most applications are based on Linux. An overview of Open Hardware for bicycles (not much yet) is available there also.
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.
Just in case you want to connect a Blackberry to a Linux PC, here are some guides about Blackberry and Linux connectivity. Not much yet, but a start. There is also the beginning of a survey of Linux applications under GPL useful for the Blackberry.
Just in case you don't want or don't need to order data recovery from a professional service, which is often expensive and takes time, here are some do-it-yourself guides for data recovery from broken hard disk drives. Of course you will not try these approaches if your data are really precious. But it you can afford to loose the data or you don't want to reveal them to others, these guides are worth a try to get the data resurrected.
As far as I can see Opensolaris as well as Solaris is not widely used on portable computers yet. TuxMobil provides a Survey of Solaris, OpenSolaris & NexentaOS Installation Guides for Laptops and Notebooks. The survey contains links to around 70 installation guides. The overall number of installation guides for Unix operating systems listed at TuxMobil is almost 8,000.
Here are some more do-it-yourself tutorials about hard disk drive silencing techniques as well as about selfmade cooling techniques. The ideas are ranging from an acoustic cabinet, switching off the HDD when not in use to cure vibration (the main cause of noise) with some rubber and others.
More OS X on Installations on Small Laptops
on
OS X On the MSI Wind
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· Score: 3, Informative
This is not the first and only OS X installation attempt on a UMPC. There is a short survey of installation guides for MAC OS X on (small) laptops and notebooks provided by TuxMobil. There are guides for the ASUS Eee PC 701, the OQO e2, the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 and others. More submissions are welcome though.
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.
If you can't wait for the 3D cellphone mouse. Here are some links to selfmade 3D mouse pointer devices. BTW: at least one of these guides has been on./ already.
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.
More Laptop Retro Moddings: Retro Typewriters
on
Ye Olde World Charm
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· Score: 1
DIY Custom Made Laptop Stands
on
Lap Desks
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· Score: 2, Informative
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.
To get an impression about a relation between a woman and a robot read
Marge Piercy: He, She and It. This is my favorite story on the subject. It is settled in the middle of the twenty-first century and deals with human relations (He and She) as well as robot and human interaction (She and It).
Slashdot Mirror
There are even a few installation reports for ELKS Linux on laptops with 286 CPUs.
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.
John Lennon has made an interesting song about this behaviour: "You can wear a collar and a tie, one thing you can't hide, is when you're crippled inside".
There is a short survey of free applications for bicycles at TuxMobil. Most applications are based on Linux. An overview of Open Hardware for bicycles (not much yet) is available there also.
TuxMobil provides a short (actually there a four entries) survey of Linux solutions for cars and automobiles. BTW: there are a lot more free and open source solutions for bicycles yet.
Can this tool be used as a means for laptop theft and loss protection?
There is at least a small number of Linux applications for watches and heart rate monitors, as well as some free and open source tools for bikes, including applications and open hardware for data acquisition from exercise bicycles. You may find (yet little) information about appropriate data formats, too.
There is also a comprehensive and international list of vendors which provide laptops, notebooks, PDAs and mobile phones with Linux pre-installed. This list is accompanied by a survey of laptop and notebook manufacturers which provide Linux pre-installed, a survey of mobile phones with Linux pre-installed and an overview of media players with Linux pre-installed (these manufacturers are marked with an asterisk).
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.
TuxMobil provides a survey of Linux compatibility and configuration guides for different Blackberry models. Currently only four guides are listed. Not much yet, but a start. But I guess the number of guides in the TuxMobil Linux and mobile phone section will increase soon.
Just in case you want to connect a Blackberry to a Linux PC, here are some guides about Blackberry and Linux connectivity. Not much yet, but a start. There is also the beginning of a survey of Linux applications under GPL useful for the Blackberry.
Just in case you don't want or don't need to order data recovery from a professional service, which is often expensive and takes time, here are some do-it-yourself guides for data recovery from broken hard disk drives. Of course you will not try these approaches if your data are really precious. But it you can afford to loose the data or you don't want to reveal them to others, these guides are worth a try to get the data resurrected.
As far as I can see Opensolaris as well as Solaris is not widely used on portable computers yet. TuxMobil provides a Survey of Solaris, OpenSolaris & NexentaOS Installation Guides for Laptops and Notebooks. The survey contains links to around 70 installation guides. The overall number of installation guides for Unix operating systems listed at TuxMobil is almost 8,000.
Here are some more do-it-yourself tutorials about hard disk drive silencing techniques as well as about selfmade cooling techniques. The ideas are ranging from an acoustic cabinet, switching off the HDD when not in use to cure vibration (the main cause of noise) with some rubber and others.
This is not the first and only OS X installation attempt on a UMPC. There is a short survey of installation guides for MAC OS X on (small) laptops and notebooks provided by TuxMobil. There are guides for the ASUS Eee PC 701, the OQO e2, the Lenovo ThinkPad X61 and others. More submissions are welcome though.
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.
If you can't wait for the 3D cellphone mouse. Here are some links to selfmade 3D mouse pointer devices. BTW: at least one of these guides has been on ./ already.
Besides Lenovo there are some other manufacturers offering Linux without "Micorosoft-Tax" or even Linux pre-installed. Here is a (not yet complete) list of currently available laptops and notebooks without "Microsoft-Tax" at TuxMobil. If you need the features of a laptop which comes with Microsoft OS still, here are some tips and tricks to get a refund for the operating system from Redmond. And just in case you want to buy a laptop with a custom Linux installation, here is a survey of resellers.
Need to upgrade or repair your computer keyboard? Missing a service manual? Here is a collection of free take apart instructions, disassembly pictures, upgrade and repair manuals, as well as do-it-yourself (DIY) tips and tricks for computer keyboards. There is also a section about custom made (adaptive) keyboards.
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.
This former ./ article deals with jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots.
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.
To get an impression about a relation between a woman and a robot read Marge Piercy: He, She and It. This is my favorite story on the subject. It is settled in the middle of the twenty-first century and deals with human relations (He and She) as well as robot and human interaction (She and It).