We never cease to be amazed by some of the creative and crazy things people in our forums do to differentiate, personalize and improve their laptops cosmetically or usability wise. In no particular order we’ve listed out a few of the better, or simply more interesting, ones to show here.
Mounting a dongle on a notebook using balsa wood
Say you’re a somewhat lazy person that has a USB receiver dongle sticking out of your laptop and it keeps breaking the USB port when you jam it in and out of a bag. How can you overcome this without having to keep pulling the dongle in and out? Why, mount it sideways on the laptop using some USB connectors and balsa wood of course:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=117945
Getting rid of white bumpers on a Dell Inspiron
It’s high time Dell got rid of the white bumpers on their Inspiron notebooks, but for those that bought one already, you’re not stuck. Here’s an example of a user painting those white bumpers black with good results using Krylon Fusion Paint
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=55096
RainX or Windex on a laptop screen (BAD IDEA)
For whatever reason there was some discussion going on in the forums as to whether RainX would be a good idea to put on a laptop screen (in case you get caught out in the rain? ). Somebody actually tried doing this, and claims no harm was done and it helped to clean the screen and keep it clean:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? p=1891312#post1891312
Putting questionable chemicals on your laptop screen is just about always a bad idea, one thing people often use to disastrous effect is Windex:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=115250
It’ll clean your windows, but will destroy an LCD.
Do it yourself paint job on a Compaq laptop
Forum member wipeout wrote up a nice article about how he painted his Compaq laptop, that was a boring silver, with a bright red paint job
Dell XPS M1210 Ferrari Mod
While Acer have the rights to the Ferrari branding of their laptops, who says you can’t self decorate a Dell with Ferrari stickers like this fellow did using carbon foil wrap and official Ferrari sticker logos:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=111504
Carbon Fiber Wrap
Next time you’re in Pep Boys buying stuff for your car, why not buy some carbon fiber wrap for the laptop as well — the results can be amazing:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? p=1835391#post1835391
Desert Camouflage paint job
If you’re off to the desert of Iraq for combat duty, be a camouflage laptop paint job would be a good idea:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php? p=1905924
Letter stickers for keyboard
When the letters on your keys get faded, instead of replacing the keyboard (which is slightly harder to do on a laptop, but still not that hard), you could go the cheap route and just get stickers to put on the faded letters.
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=96127
Burlington Northern Railroad laptop
A forum member was nostalgic for an old railroad company named Burlington Northern Railroad, so he painted his laptop with the old green color the trains used to have
Read more here: : forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=95324
Carbon wrap on Quanta KN1-PM
Some more carbon wrap modding, once again it looks good:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=54808&page=6
Fox stickers, lots of them
This modification is all about fox stickers, not sure what to make of it myself
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=72130
Dragon on lid of Acer
One of our forum members has an artistic sister who was able to use what appears to be nothing more than Sharpie markers to make a pretty killer looking dragon on an Acer laptop lid:
Unfortunately, the laptop was returned to the store and the art work was rubbed off to enable that return.
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=73986
Carbon Fiber touchpad trim
If you don’t want to go all out with carbon fiber cover on your laptop, how about as some trim around the touchpad?
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=98428
Racing mod for Acer laptop
This paint job to give an Acer laptop a fast look is simply amazing:
Read more here: www.iromet.com.pl/moje/acer4/index.html
Asus A6Ja mod
More talented art work to soak-in, this time on an Asus A6Ja. Even the mouse was decorated to match the look of the lid. Behold:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=43808
Corvette Laptop
A very muscular looking setup for sure with this Corvette theme laptop customization, done via sticker:
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=51030
Dell Snapcover mod
Dell offers colored snap-on covers to help spice up the look of an Inspiron laptop, but for some such as forum member Delvien that’s just not enough. So he cut out some cool looking patterns from the snapcover he got, and gave it a new paint job.
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=40703
Dora the Explorer ready laptop
This one is cute, an uncle was asked to refurb an old HP laptop for his 4 year old niece. He fitted it with a new hard drive, battery, memory and freshened it up with a pretty looking two toned lavender look — all ready for Dora the Explorer stickers to be placed on at a later date.
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=40382
Mouse Tray
This is an innovative idea regarding placing a swivel tray on the bottom of a notebook so that it can easily be swiveled out and used as a tray for a mouse.
Read more here: www.notebookreview.com/default.asp? newsID=3458
Putting cheap stickers on an expensive laptop to deter theft
I was very confused at first as to why forum member dietcokefiend would buy a $2,000 ThinkPad laptop and then put awful loking stickers on the lid. His reasoning? To make the notebook look cheap and deter theft.
(view larger image)
Read more here: forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php? t=41464
Asus S96J all prettied up
I’ll save one of my favorites until last, this paint job on an Asus S96J by forum member circa69 is just beautiful. PPG auto paint applied via air brush did the trick:
Yes, the mouse and the screensaver match the paint job. Amazing!
Read more about it in the forumsor at circa69’s website.
Conclusion
Thanks to all of those people that spend the time in submitting these pictures to the forums, and kudos to all for the creativity and craziness! If you’d like to show off any cosmetic modifications you have done, we invite you to post in our Notebook Cosmetic Modifications forum.
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