Three years ago for Christmas I built my wife a 14 inch digital picture frame from an old laptop and a nice picture frame from the hobby store. It boots puppy linux from a usb stick, and runs through a slideshow of all of the pictures in the SLIDESHOW folder on the thumb drive, so there are basically no moving parts (old laptop with no fan, just a heat sync). It's been running strong for the past 3 years and only needs a reboot when the house loses power. I love DIY projects.
Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
31–40 of 54 posts
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#32Comes with DIY games Angry Rectangles and Rectangle Ninja.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#33Wait - what about the cost of Windows 7?
Oh, I see - it must have been included on the used laptop he purchased. Makes sense now. ;)
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe he doesn't want to break the law and buy an illegal "knock-off" tablet.
Most of the knock-offs aren't illegal. There is a minority that put the Apple logo on them, which is clearly illegal, but... Beyond that the look of Apple's products are protected by design patents and the law on them is much less clear cut and varies by country (see the Samsung case for example). There are a large number of non-iPad knock offs available for under $125, though. A quick search on DealExtreme will help…
You mean like the Apple logo that's on the tablet in the article's picture?
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the knock-offs aren't illegal. There is a minority that put the Apple logo on them, which is clearly illegal, but... Beyond that the look of Apple's products are protected by design patents and the law on them is much less clear cut and varies by country (see the Samsung case for example). There are a large number of non-iPad knock offs available for under $125, though. A quick search on DealExtreme will help…
You mean like the Apple logo that's on the tablet in the article's picture?
What should I do with my iPhone with an Android sticker logo on it? Come on man... Jeez.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#36That image has one hell of an alt text.
Looks kinda like a localization failure. If you have e.g. Chinese in UTF-8 but mess up the output (or input) somewhere it tends to look something like that.
It looks like it's GB18030, HZ or GBK. At least those are the ones that render with no unknown characters. I don't read/speak any Chinese dialects so I've got no idea which two encodings are likely gibberish.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#37>One thing Wei may not appreciate is Sun taking the time to stick rhinestones all around the edge of the casing he so lovingly created What's wrong with her personalising this? That piece of editorialising was unwarranted, I'm sure he was delighted that she fell in love with it enough to put her own mark on it. To the critics below: it just made me sad because if my boyfriend made me something awesome like this and I…
I think this is the result of a lack of cultural understanding. In East Asian countries, it is very common for women to decorate their cellphones (and tablets now as well, I suppose) with adhesive gems. There is an enormous market for such things, on the same scale as cell phone cases in the West.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#38>One thing Wei may not appreciate is Sun taking the time to stick rhinestones all around the edge of the casing he so lovingly created What's wrong with her personalising this? That piece of editorialising was unwarranted, I'm sure he was delighted that she fell in love with it enough to put her own mark on it. To the critics below: it just made me sad because if my boyfriend made me something awesome like this and I…
That is not "personalized" but going with the crowd. Here in China they all do that, the cheaper the device the more glitter is glued onto it.
Tastes are different, so whatever.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#39Saw it yesterday on China Daily, which is not the most reliable news source, btw.
Looks like this is just an old laptop wrapped into a shiny shell with a touch screen attached. Nice gift for his girlfriend but hardly worth a news story.
Wrapping old stoff up in a new packaging and then printing some expensive brand onto it is actually common in China. You can get "iPhones" here for under 100USD at everywhere.
Re: Student can't afford tablet for girlfriend, so builds her one for $125
#40Wait - what about the cost of Windows 7? Oh, I see - it must have been included on the used laptop he purchased. Makes sense now. ;)
Here in China? 5 Yuan in any electronics market. Usually with Office and Photoshop included (and probably some spyware).