Hasta La Gadget!

Few can build ’em like Benjamin Heckendorn. Fewer still bother to try. Two college kids managed to do a bang-up job anyhow building this fully loaded, Jasper-juiced Xbox 360 laptop. With a built-in 17-inch Gateway monitor, keyboard, functioning Xbox Live camera and Wireless Network Adapter, this brick hits all the right notes — yet remains remarkably stylish for a learn-as-you-go student project. If you agree, you can read a remarkably detailed account of how they built it at the source link, see a proof-of-completion video after the break, or even further their education by purchasing the mean machine on eBay for your very own.

Continue reading Student-made Xbox 360 laptop channels the Heck out of… well, you know

Student-made Xbox 360 laptop channels the Heck out of… well, you know originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  Mission Impossible: 360 Laptop, eBay, benheck.com Forums  | Email this | Comments

Dropped a stack of change on a premium Wacom drawing tablet, only to find yourself with Cintiq envy? Got an old laptop handy? If so, odds are good that you’ve occasionally (or persistently, for that matter) thought about hacking together an LCD tablet of your very own. Problem is, the mods we’ve seen require some serious shop time — building a custom enclosure isn’t for the lighthearted, you know? But if you’re in possession of a sizable Wacom Intuos and roughly $220 of post-tax cheddar, TabletMod.com has a purpose-built, laser-cut acrylic enclosure with your name on it. You’ll still need an LCD controller kit and CCFL extenders, and there’s still a chance you’ll be paying more for the whole kit and caboodle than if you just got a low-end $1,000 Cintiq 12WX to begin with — but if you’ve already got half the parts lying around (or you’re just dying to scratch another DIY itch), this project might be worth your while. Cheapskates like us, however, will continue to wait for the Bamboo variety, though you can certainly dabble in the source link if you’re scouting some instructional videos.

Homegrown Wacom Cintiq LCD tablet comes to life through prefab DIY enclosure originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Hack A Day  |  Ponoko, TabletMod.com  | Email this | Comments

Remember the HarmoNESica? A brief refresher, then: it’s what happens when you’ve got a copy of Super Tecmo Bowl, a Pocket Pal harmonica, and the desire to create a unique musical instrument. But if you don’t have any of the aforementioned ingredients and just want the end result, eBay’s got you covered as usual — three HarmoNESicas have been gathering bids at the online auction house this week. Whether your pleasure be Dick Tracy, Super Mario Bros. 3 or The Legend of Zelda, there’s a harmonica to match; and if (for some reason) you want to actually play one of the games, you’ll find the ROM guts tastefully included. But before you make your bid, remember: there’s more than one way to skin an NES cartridge.

NES harmonicas hit eBay, three lucky gamers cheer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink GoNintendo  |  Dick Tracy, Mario 3, Zelda  | Email this | Comments

By now, you’ve probably seen many of the homemade videos from people who ordered an Intel Core i7-920 processor from Newegg.com and received a bogus processor and hunk of plastic shaped like a fan. Newegg has thrown
supplier IPEX Infotech of Freemont California under the bus for this fiasco; in a statement released to Information Week, the retailer said, “We have since come to discover the CPUs were counterfeit and are terminating our relationship with this supplier.”

PCMag.com did not order one. But luckily for us, my
neighbor, Microsoft TechNet columnist Greg Steen, just happened to be one of the lucky 200 or so buyers, and he let me borrow it for the day. As you can see, the box looks very real, and the weight of the package is perfect. Lots more images after the jump!

Pixel Qi is on the cusp of shipping its triple-mode LCD screens as straight, swap-in replacements for your existing laptop screen.

The Pixel Qi display works three ways, saving power and making it readable in any light. Transmissive mode is the one you are likely looking at now, a backlit LED panel which uses power for both the light and the pixels blocking and coloring that light. Next up is the reflective mode, which switches off the backlight and flips the colored pixels to grayscale. This looks a lot like hi-res e-ink displays, but it still uses some power to refresh the screen. It does drain the battery slower than the transmissive mode, though.

Lastly is the hybrid transflective mode, which keeps the full color display, but let the mirror at the back of the screen use sunlight as the backlight. This means you can work outdoors but still see a pretty good image.

Which is fine, but you probably wouldn’t buy a Pixel Qi notebook except for niche cases. With the DIY kits, though, you’ll be able to fit one of these magical screens to your own laptop. Better, it’s easy. Mary-Lou Jepson of Pixel Qi:

It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting [sic] the old screen and plugging this one in. That’s it. It’s a 5 minute operation.

This is the kind of mod that could make netbooks useful at last. Or maybe I’m being too optimistic. The kits will be out in the second quarter of this year, just in time for some fun when you get bored of your iPad.

DIY Pixel Qi Kits [Pixel Qi blog]

See Also:

• Up Close and Personal With the Pixel Qi Display
• Pixel Qi Promises Cheap, Readable, Low-Power Displays
• Pixel Qi Offers Peek at New Display
• Pixel Qi
• Why E-Books Are Stuck in a Black-and-White World