After great in-class critique and suggestions, and the generous donation of an old Apple PowerBook G4 by my teacher, I decided to attempt to repurpose an old computer. I began tearing apart the Powerbook using this tutorial. There is also this video, which I of course found after I had already disassembled my machine. There are many great tutorials to be found using the google machine or searching instructables.

The innards, pre demolition.


Underneath the keyboard and mouse pad.

Gutting the inside.

It is proving to be no easy task and I am going to have to work very hard to get the machine up and functioning again, but I am excited to at least be attempting something that I believe could set an important example for environmentally-conscious consumers of electronics.

Below is my first mock-up. I have found some great tutorials to turn an LCD monitor into a touch-screen, so in that case, I imagine this product functioning much like an iPad or other touch-screen device. It would be programmed with a simple drawing application and would serve as a digital sketch book.

This is my second mock-up. This product would not utilize a touch screen, but instead the mouse pad would be the drawing surface.

Both models would have to consider the handedness of the user. Hopefully I can incorporate a handedness feature into the program so that the product could simply be turned upside down to switch between right/left handers.