7. Atari 800 XE Laptop Mod
Image: Benjamin Heckendorn
If retro gaming is your thing but you want the functionality of today’s computers, why not combine the two? You’ll need some serious modding chops – like throwback king Ben Heck, who’s a master at giving old consoles a new lease of life. His homemade Atari XE 800 laptop is packed with the innards of an ‘87 Atari 800 system and works as a portable gaming machine.
Images: Benjamin Heckendorn
Ben realized his dream over two years of technological tinkering, but the product speaks for itself. With features including player controls, joystick ports, a cursor control knob, a TFT LCD screen, old school LEDs and all the basics of a modern laptop, this is one sweet piece. And check out that beige wood effect finish!
6. LCDetar Laptop Mod
Image: Ben Lewry
Want to rock while you surf the web? Then this next laptop mod-cum musical instrument is for you! Built by guitarist and computer wiz Ben Lewry as an experiment “to see just what a “six-string” computer could do,” it’s an entire laptop fitted inside the body of an electric guitar. The result is one groovy piece of dual purpose equipment
Gold and Redwood Testa Motari Customized Laptop
Image: Testa Motari
If you’ve got a deep pocket and want to experience the exceptional as you browse the internet, you may want to feel this next laptop at your fingertips. Less a laptop mod than a fully fledged product from company Testa Motari, it’s an opulent piece of equipment beautified with gold and Brazilian rosewood that’s about as bling as can be without an 18 carat gold chain dangling from its display screen.
Image: Testa Motari
The keys, touchpad and mouse are gilded and laser etched, and all the components are customized, which, combined, makes for a true luxury laptop experience. Its functionality is of course utterly state-of-the-art, but could you really use one of these things for fear of breaking it?
4. The Wacky Wall Street Laptop Mod
Image: Jeff Jaxon
This post-apocalyptic looking beast was built by Californian computer modder Jeff Jaxon over 100 hours, for the princely sum of $22. When he procured a PowerBook in two pieces, “with the display completely broken off its hinges,” Jeff eschewed a conventional patch-up job, thinking: “I might as well embrace an all-out, decayed-future, Road Warrior look. I started with a big brass toilet-seat hinge and built from there.”
Image: Jeff Jaxon
Jeff’s design took the Wackiest Mod title in MacMod Challenge 2005, but he tells us: “The laptop itself was destroyed in shipping after a photo shoot for MacWorld, so the photos (and pieces) are all I have left of the project.” Shame. Mad Max would have loved one.
3. Asbesto Molesto Wooden Laptop
We’ve had our share of retro chic already, but this next laptop takes the anachronistic urge to a new level. Yes, we present Gabriele Zaverio’s artful wooden laptop. The plastic shell of an old laptop has been replaced by a handmade case of sumptuously cut-and-finished wood and leather. The result is lightweight and truly unique.
It’s a labor of love that Gabriele has been perfecting for over 20 years, and it’s not just a matter of making the laptop beautiful, “But also of giving it life and personalising it into an object that communicates history, life and warmth.” Time-honored crafting methods are married with today’s technology for a laptop that will only acquire more personality with age – like a fine wine.
2. Pink Hello Kitty Laptop Mod
Image: FJ!
This is another beaut from FJ! (see the Pokémon laptop), though this one’s a more feminine Pink Hello Kitty design. To create this fluffy little number FJ! snazzed up a broken laptop with “ingredients” including pink and red spray paint, a pick ‘n’ mix of Hello Kitty merchandise, and a pimping bright pink feather boa around the case.
Image: FJ!
Then, after going to work with the spray can on the case and keyboard tray, it was a question of artfully arranging puffy stickers over top and sticking silver hologram and nail decals to the keys. Purr-fect enough for a magazine editor to have been blown away and got FJ! to make him his own personalized design. Pink fuzz never looked so tasteful.
1. Datamancer Steampunk Laptop Mod
Image: Richard Nagy of www.datamancer.net
If you like steampunk – a reimagining of past technological ideas of how the future might be – then you’ll love this next bit of eye candy from modding genius Richard Nagy. Lovingly fashioned to look like a Victorian music box, the hand-crafted wooden case features an intricate clockwork display beneath glass and houses a fully functioning laptop.
Good rreading
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