Laptop as canvas for creative urge
Alexandra | 12:56 am | June 29, 2010 | Laptop Mods
Your laptop is not only a perfect working tool, it should also reflect your personality and style. This is what manufacturers keep telling us, don’t they? However, what kind of individuality are we talking about, when thousands of other people all over the world have exactly the same gadget? A young artist from Russia has decided to make something completely new out of her 15-inch Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pro V350 laptop. This was the origin of her new hand painted laptop series.
“I always wanted to do everything in my own way, like no one else can. I am painting something all the time, for example windows in the house, plates, walls. And when I bought my first laptop, I wanted to make it unique as well. In the beginning I was a bit scared because I didn’t want to make it any damage, though I’ve had ‘painted’ my Nokias with nail polish on several occasions. I’ve decided to use my old set of stained glass paints because if something would have gone wrong they could be removed without a trace.
Then the question turned up: what to draw? I wanted something that would reflect my personality – elegant and stylish but at the same time feminine. And because I love animals I’ve decided to paint my laptop with pussy cats. And afterwards I’ve been repainting my laptop every now and then: with the pictures of girls, stars, plants, flowers etc. Laptops tend to wear off quite quickly and soon after my first laptop painting attempt I’ve decided to get myself a new one. For my second laptop I’ve chosen ThinkPad SL400. Its glossy lid where all touches become visible hadn’t put me out – “I’ll colour it anyway” – I thought. So my new laptop has soon acquired itself a crocodile skin and looked stunningly!
But the chosen design was the way too masculine and aggressive. And the laptop itself was too manly and big as well, so I had to do something completely different to adjust it to my personal taste. Some time later the crocodile skin was removed accurately to give way for the new décor. It looked a bit like an ornamental iron grid. This painting job was done in about two hours, practically over lunchtime.
When I started looking for a new laptop, lighter and smaller the new Lenovo ThinkPad X100e had just been released. In spite of a number of negative moments (such as overheating and battery life) it turned out to be the most suitable option. Although many people were trying to persuade me to take a classical ThinkPad x200, I bought myself the red ThinkPad x100e. And even before I held it in my hands I already had an idea of how to colour it. And now this idea comes true:
These hieroglyphs do make sense by the way- I wished my laptop to be happy, reliable and beloved. Later I added a colour accents with the dark red paint. The chosen drawing suited the x100e very well:
The great thing about the stained glass paints is that they can be easily removed. At the same time they stay long enough – about half a year even if you carry your laptop with you all the time. Now I have no wish to redo it again but desire to create is burning up more and more. That’s why I switched to my friends’ laptops. I have coloured two Lenovo Idea Pad S9’s since:
| Acer appeared in the 3D style: | Glamourous Sony Vaio for a pretty girl: |
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And a 15-inch Asus:
And this one was my first commercial job — the picture of the Eiffel Tower is based on the movie “From Paris with love”. The owner of the laptop liked the drawing: he has the same theme with a leaning Eiffel Tower on his mobile phone. It’s all thanks to the owner who was not afraid to give me his gadgets and who was very satisfied with the result in the end! All of a sudden my hobby became profitable. Now I have a catalogue of standard drawings available to order but I can also design something very unusual.”
Source: Habrahabr
Your laptop is not only a perfect working tool. It should also reflect your personality and style. This is what manufacturers keep telling us, don’t they? However, what kind of individuality are we talking about, when thousands of other people all over the world have exactly the same gadget?
Some of the most stylish laptops ever designed
Alexandra | 12:47 am | December 23, 2009 | Laptop Mods
For a laptop, design is not less important than its hardware insides, as any industrial designer will testify. People are ready to pay high premium for so-called “high-tech beauties”. That is why stylish and unusual laptops can be sold much faster than “standard” ones. Moreover, designers add some new features even in budget laptop models in a bid to attract additional buyers.
For example, Acer maintains this trend in such popular model like Ferrari, Fujitsu implements it in LifeBook, Toshiba surprises us with Qosmio, etc.
The first thing that manufacturers use in such laptops is an unusual laptop body and well-chosen color combinations. They try to crack the access code into customers’ hearts, finding courageous colors, hues and nuances. They also try to replace standard plastic laptop bodies with titanium ones or use special mixtures to give them more shine and protect from mechanical damage. So, those who want to buy a stylish notebook and express their individuality always can find something special.
The world’s leading portable PC manufacturers experiment with new materials (processed plastic, precious wood, stones and metals). People want to stand out from the crowd, be different from each other and it plays into the hands of many companies. For example, one of the Arab sheikhs ordered a laptop with inlays from ivory. Just imagine how much it cost him!
Laptops have become a part of our everyday live; it’s not a surprise to anyone. But you can impress others, putting a high-tech gadget in an unusual body. So, let’s feast our eyes upon other stylish laptops:
A gorgeous case for amazing Sony Vaio P laptop
You can buy stylish leather case for Sony Vaio P choosing one of 30 different colors.
Lenovo Pocket Yoga. It’s an awesome laptop, but unfortunately it’s just a concept
Clevo – More Flowers On Laptop Lids
maksim | 4:15 am | March 11, 2008 | CeBIT, Laptop Mods, Laptop News
CeBIT 2008, Hannover, Germany
Laptop brand Clevo, a dark horse from Taiwan, has big and hungry plans for world expansion, judging by this year’s CeBIT show. The company presented several lines of products, from tiny tablet-style portable laptops to big table-sized multimedia machines.
There would have been nothing special about Clevo notebooks if it was not for unusual and some might even say appealing bodywork – flowers, bamboo trees and ladybirds, mixed in with occasional hieroglyphs to make it all look wise and sophisticated, rather than childish and cheap.
It all depends on the fact that you don’t know what the hieroglyphs say, of course. The magic is ruined the moment you know what it means, and it just isn’t worth the risks. Or you may end up painting laptop black again after you find out that it is just a weird old Taiwanese proverb – “Some people prefer liquor, others prefer tofu, and some even like rotten salmon.”
5 Things All New Laptops Will Have In 2010
maksim | 4:16 am | February 29, 2008 | Laptop Mods
How slow and old can a laptop be to still be usable today? Well, an ancient Pentium II laptop running Windows 98 will be enough for internet browsing, Word and Excel, music and movies – and that is pretty much all that most of us ever need.
Yet, we don’t see Pentium II laptops anymore, even though they are cheaper than a lightbulb. People prefer new, expensive laptops with built in things like fingerprint security or webcams, even though they keep the laptop at home and still work with the same old Excel sheets, and never turn the webcam on.
And this is the only way it can be in our consumerism-obsessed society, and cheap laptops that we use today will similarly look old and cost nothing in two years from now. What, then, will new laptops of 2010 be like? We came up with a list of 5 new features that we think will become standard in each laptop very soon.
- Solid state harddrive, or SSD
It is already happening now, with new Apple Macbook Air laptop being sold with a choice of traditional HDD or new SSD harddrive. It is smaller, harder to damage, it takes less energy as there are no movable parts and it should also be cheaper to produce, once the market is saturated..
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. - Wireless USB
Also already a reality, with Dell already selling its new XPS M1330 laptop with an option of wireless USB being built in. This means fewer cables, and fewer cables can only be a good thing..
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. - 3G/HSDPA wireless broadband card
Internet anywhere, anytime? Oh yes, please. Understandably, it becomes more and more popular as the prices of mobile broadband fall each month. Most major laptop manufacturers are including them with new laptops already..
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. - External CD/DVD drive
This one is not as straightforward as the previous three, since people still use CDs and watch DVD movies. Yet, CDs are big, subject to scratches and they need to be spinned, which needs energy and produces heat. There are two things that can kill a CD- the continuing rise of online downloads and the price of flash memory falling below the price of a blank CD. If this happens, nothing will save a CD from a place on a museum shelf, right next to the tape cassette..
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. - New body shape
With solid state harddrive and no CD drive, new laptops can afford to become much thinner. There will be no movable parts, and together with new low energy processors this will help consume less energy and produce less heat, reducing the need and size of cooling pipes and fans. Laptop shape will change forever to a slimmer, lighter one, and old laptops will suddenly become as elegant as 19th century typewriters..
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This is of course just a wild prediction and, like all predictions, will most likely differ from the real thing. You are welcome to disagree, any feedback on the list will be greatly appreciated.
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Second Skin For Your Laptop
Boris | 1:04 am | December 19, 2007 | Laptop Mods
A snake about to shed its skin is referred to as being “in the blue”. A laptop that has its lid painted in boring greyish factory colours is known as being “in the grey”. And just as it is necessary for a snake’s health to shed it skin, it is vital for any self-respecting laptop to get a custom design lid cover.
With minimum effort, you can give new look to your good old laptop and set yourself apart from the crowd. If it doesn’t sound like much, you can brand it with your corporate logo or initials.
There are several companies doing laptop skins, but Irish venture Aspoke.com seems to be the main one on this side of the Pond. The contrast between technology and nature is what makes these skins so amazing to look at.
Source: Laptopskins.net
Brown Macbook, Anyone?
maksim | 3:21 am | December 14, 2007 | Laptop Mods
In the
When it comes to laptops, there are three accepted colours: black, silver and white. Anything else is considered bad taste, apart from pink, which can go down well with female law students on high heels and in company of a tiny dog. Laptop manufacturers realise that there ARE people willing to buy khaki, maroon, or peach-coloured laptops, but never actually produce them in fear of losing money if they don’t get the colour combination right for the public eye.
Colorware, a US-based company, is on a mission to blow the world of laptops up with colour. A laptop can be customised online using special online painting tool, and then ordered directly from the company. And, as well as selling new, they also repaint used laptops. The only drawback is the limit of brands they can do- at the moment only Apple and some of IBM.
A brown Macbook Pro, anyone?
Source: Colorware