Turn that Broken MacBook into a Teeny Desktop

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  An intrepid modder was given a sad, water-damaged MacBook and turned it into his own little Mac Pro Mini with a little know-how and a $40 Mac Pro case knockoff. His MacBook's motherboard worked, but LCD, HDD, battery, memory, keyboard, and DVD drive were all busted. After replacing the HDD and memory, he set out to stuff his cheap-o case with the corpse of his MacBook.

  
  
  

  The mod takes a lot of soldering, fitting, and cooling, but none of it is particularly complicated and a bigger case would probably simplify matters. The finished product is a fully-functional desktop version of the MacBook, and probably has a better cooling system. It's a great mod, I love that he started out with something broken and finished with an operational and even enviable system.
  

Rechargeable USB Cell

USBCELL AA Batteries Can be Charged through USB -

If you thought rechargeable batteries were a good green idea, the USBCELL rechargeable battery will blow your mind- it plugs into any computer’s USB port to recharge. It’s a standard AA battery which will fit into all your every day uses. We’re not the only ones amped up about USBCELL- today at CEBIT, the green battery was awarded a Gold award at the IF Product Design ceremony. Produced by Moixa Energy, has a flip cap top that houses the USB port, and can be used like any regular AA battery. Not to mention, it cuts back on the nearly 15 billion Alkaline batteries made and thrown away each year.

The little power cells can also can be charged in approved NiMH chargers. USBCELL won a New Energy Entrepreneur of the Year award last Wednesday, too. We’re glad such a deserving product is getting the attention it deserves. [usbcell]

WORLDS SECURE USB DRIVE

40 HRS BATTERY LIFE FOR LAPTOP----IS IT TRUE

The researchers at stanford have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give of questions about lithium ion ,rechargeable lithium ion batteries--used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones--as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours.

The new batteries were developed by assistant professor Yi Cui and colleagues at Stanford University's Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."

Citing a research paper they wrote, published in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui said the increased battery capacity was made possible though a new type of anode that utilizes silicon nanowires. Traditional lithium ion batteries use graphite as the anode. This limits the amount of lithium--which holds the charge--that can be held in the anode, and it therefore limits battery life.

Silicon anodes have the "the highest theoretical charge capacity" according to Cui's paper, but they expand when charging and shrink during use: a cycle that causes the silicon to be pulverized, degrading the performance of the battery. For 30 years, this dead end stumped researchers, who poured their battery life-extending energy into improving graphite-based anodes.

Cui and his colleagues looked at this old problem and overcame it by constructing a new type of silicon nanowire anode. In Cui's anode, the lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter that is a thousandth of the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate to four times their normal size as they soak up lithium, but unlike previous silicon anodes, they do not fracture.

Cui said there are a few barriers to commercializing the technology.

"We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology," Cui said. "There are no roadblocks for either of these."

Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. He expects the battery to be commercialized and available within "several years," pending testing

WORLD'S SLIMMEST NOTEBOOK

During his Macworld Expo keynote address on Tuesday morning, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air, a computer that the company billed as the world's thinnest notebook -- small enough to fit inside an interoffice mailing envelope. It's priced starting at $1,799 and will be available within two weeks.

Sporting a silvery finish, the MacBook Air features a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display that has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution. The backlighting saves power and provides "instant on" response from the moment you turn it on, according to Jobs. The device has a slightly wedge-shaped profile. It weighs about 3 pounds, and sports a thickness of 0.16-0.76 inches. It's 12.8 inches wide and 8.95 inches deep.

The MacBook Air also features a built-in iSight webcam and a full sized MacBook-style black keyboard. The keyboard is backlit, similar to MacBook Pros, and has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts brightness. The trackpad is also capable of recognizing multi-touch gestures, similar to using an iPhone or iPod touch. As a result, the MacBook Air's trackpad is disproportionately large, compared to the size of trackpads found on the MacBook or MacBook Pro.

The MacBook Air features a 1.8-inch hard disk drive with 80GB of storage capacity standard. A 64GB solid-state disk (SSD) drive is an option. The hard drive is a Parallel ATA (PATA) model that operates at 4200 RPM.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip running at 1.6GHz, with 1.8GHz available as an option. Jobs noted that Intel was willing to engineer a new version of the Core 2 Duo specifically to Apple's specifications -- it's 60 percent smaller than others. The chip operates with 4MB of on-chip shared L2 cache running at full processor speed, and uses an 800MHz frontside bus. 2GB of 667MH DDR2 SDRAM is also included.

Like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Air features a slimmed down MagSafe connector for power. It comes with a 45 watt power adapter. A flip-down door on one side reveals USB 2.0, Micro-DVI (to connect an external display) and a headphone jack. The MacBook Air also includes 802.11n-based wireless networking support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

Apple estimates that with wireless networking turned on, the MacBook Air can get about 5 hours of battery life.

No internal optical drive is included, but Apple will offer a $99 USB 2.0-based add-on SuperDrive for users who need it. For users that opt not to get the optical drive, Apple is offering a new software feature on this machine called Remote Disk; it enables you to "borrow" the optical drive of another Mac or PC on the same network as the MacBook Air, to use for installing software, for example.

Apple's frequently been in the crosshairs of environmental group Greenpeace in recent years. Jobs offered information about the environmental goals behind the MacBook Air -- it has a fully recyclable aluminum case, and is "the first" to have a mercury-free display with arsenic-free glass. All the circuit boards are BFR-free and PVC-free, and the retail packaging uses 56 percent less material than the MacBook packaging.

WIFI DETECTING LAPTOP BAGS

There’s nothing worse when you’re on the road and you’re in desperate need of WiFi access. Those are always the times where you can’t ever seem to find an open network. Sure, you can keep breaking out your laptop to check for one, or even get one of those little WiFi detection gadgets and walk around looking like a true nerd, but neither of those options is very appealing. With a Soyntec Wiffinder bag you’ll never have to worry about it again.

These bags look like your average laptop cases, and they come in a variety of styles like backpacks, shoulder strap bags and rolling suitcases. The difference is the little display that lets you know if an open connection is nearby, and how strong the signal is.

Mobile with Thumb Drives

Sony Ericsson Plays Nice With Thumb Drives -

You know, industrial designers seem to love conceptualizing what future Sony Ericsson mobiles will look like. Designer Vincent Palicki is just one of many but his design actually looks like it could be made today and fit right in with the SE family.

It’s a slim candy bar style phone complete with a big screen, standard SE key layout but touched up with stainless steel buttons. Yes it’ll do music, movies, text, email, blah blah and blah so where’s the innovation here? It would be the full size USB port, perfect for any thumb drive. Of course it’s not meant to have a “sore thumb” sticking out at all times, but it’s a way to transfer files like music, videos, and pictures to and from without the need of a computer.