Rss

  • twitter
  • youtube

Archives for : portable

XBOOK 360 Laptop

The XBOOK ONE – The Xbox One Laptop is HERE!

THE NEW AND IMPROVED XBOX LAPTOP! I call it the XBOOK!

xbook logo

The XBOOK ONE – The Xbox One Laptop is HERE!

The last XBOX Laptop I made was a great little machine. It sold well on here and I brought it to so many LAN parties and got tons of compliments on it. I not only sold them to people that just wanted a xbox laptop to brag about, but also went to soldiers that used them all over the world. But at $1700 it was a bit out of reach for alot of people.

    I wasn’t trying to charge alot to make alot. Alot of people would email me and offering me as little as 200.00 for one! I had to turn down alot of people because of how long it took me to build. Took me about 3 weeks of time from the CNC Machining to all of the soldering I would do. So I set out to make a new Xbox laptop that was not only better quality, thinner and better screen… but one that I could sell for much cheaper and could build quicker. So the idea of the XBOOK was born!

    Since my last xbox, I have acquired more machines to help me build this XBOOK. I got a bigger CNC Router as seen on my blog. This allowed me to make more parts at once and make it faster. I also purchased a Laser engraver/cutter. This has been extraordinary to use to cut acrylics. I also picked up a vinyl plotter that has been a life saver when it comes to the detail work and graphics on the XBOOK.

xbookcad

    I took alot of time designing this xbox in cad drawings. It is made up of a total of 4 layers of black starboard plastic. Starboard is a marine grade polymer that hold up real well! Its VERY strong and comes in black so no paint that can chip off! Saves time and materials! Its of the same type of material that cutting boards are made out of. This stuff holds up WAY better than the older PVC material I used on the previous laptop. I then used Black acrylic for all of the outside covers and also the inside of the laptop. This allows for a nice glossy shine, but also gives something for the vinyl  to stick too as its hard to apply anything to starboard with adhesive.

IMG_2120 IMG_2127

All of the silver detail work on this is vinyl. This is all cut on my plotter and fits PERFECTLY on this XBOOK. It gives it a real professional look that is superior to the older laptop. All of this is customizable. You can pick pretty much any color for the graphics and also on the screen in between the speakers I can put your gamer tag in! (Or any other word you’d like).  I can not change the color of the black starboard. That is the only color it comes in (other than white) and you really cant paint it. But, that being said, all of the acrylic you can change the color of. That would be the Button panel, CD Tray, Ring of Light, side covers and the LCD bezel and inside of the XBOOK. I would have to special order the colors if you wanted something other than black for the acrylic, and would take a little longer to make and cost just a little more for materials. But I do have in stock like 30-40 colors of vinyl and will do any color you’d like! Just email me if you have any questions about that.

Now onto the screen! The old xbox laptop I made had a very nice 17” 720p HD monitor. This looked real good and made for a great display. But.. I wanted something better for this new one. I have upgraded this laptop to a 19” 720p HD LED Screen. This is very crisp and VERY bright. The LED Backlight is current technology and has a very even glow to it! It also makes the screen much thinner as well! The old 17” screen was nice but still felt a bit small. This 19” is perfect! You dont feel like you gotta sit real close to play!

Right below the screen is a pair of high powered speakers. It gets much louder than the previous version and also is positioned better. On the last one the speakers were on the bottom portion of the laptop and pointed up. On this, I placed them inside the screen bezel. This positions the speakers to point towards you. Gives a great stereo sound to them and even has good low end as well. This comes stock with a headphone jack as well so you can play in privacy if you’d like!

IMG_2134

As you can see there are PLENTY of vent holes. I used the stock cooling of the XBOX 360 Slim, so its quite and cools just perfectly. I have no had one overheating issue yet with this one or any previous model. Just dont leave it on if you close the lid! On the side you still have access to the slims internal hard drive. Just unscrew a couple screws and slide it into place and your good to go! (Also if you want, I left enough room inside the laptop to plug in a portable HDD into one of the stock USB ports… this can open up alot of possibilities for more HDD space!) The ring of light along with the CD Tray and Buttons are located on the front along with 2 USD ports. These buttons are the best I’ve ever made. They are extremely professional and look good! Starting left to right, you have Power, CD Open, Sync, and Volume up and down. (If you’d like to access the configuration menu of the LCD, there are more buttons inside the unit to change any settings you’d like of the LCD itself)

IMG_2124

Onto the other side you have another vent and your ethernet port. This XBOOK comes with built in Wi-Fi so you can play xbox live without the worry of a cable. But hey, its there if you need it! If you’d like component video out, the second vent here is modular so I can add video out no problem. Currently the screen uses HDMI as the internal connection, but if you’d like video out, id have to switch the internal video to component. You will still get 720p High Def, but the internal screen wont be as great as HDMI. Thats all your choice!

On the back of the unit is a simple universal power supply cable. The XBOX’s main power brick is located inside of the XBOOK. So no longer do you need to carry around a power brick either! And the LCDs power is pulled off that same cable on the inside. So it only takes a single cable to get this thing running! Please note that this does NOT have a internal battery. xboxs are not made to run off batteries. They are very power hungry and would eat through batteries extremely quickly, plus is weigh alot more!

xbox20laptop

Total weight of this unit is 17.5 Lbs. Thats not really heavy considering what your carrying! A xbox, Power supply, LCD screen, cables and a case all in one! The dimensions closed are 18.25”x12.25”x 3.5”. This is bigger, but much thinner than the last one. Only reason its bigger is because of the the 19” LCD screen. But because of this same screen I was able to make it a 1” thinner! This really is a great machine that will be the envy of all your friends!

Now down to the real question… price…. Like I said, I wanted to make the most affordable XBOX laptop on the internet with my previous model, and I did. But with this one, I wanted it even cheaper! And I accomplished this goal as well! This XBOOK laptop starts at $995.00 USD. Thats right, UNDER $1,000.00!!! Thats for a brand spanking new XBOOK laptop with customizable options for you! You pick the vinyl color and free gamer tag personalization! If youd like it even cheaper, send me your XBOX 360 (must be the new style XBOX Slim) and ill knock off $200.00 dollars off the price!

So here is the Price info……..

4GB XBOOK 360 Laptop      $995.00

250GB XBOOK 360 Laptop  $1,095.00 (extra cost of the xbox slim)

Gamertag Personalization     FREE

Customized Vinyl Color        FREE

Customized Acrylic Color    $50.00

Optional Component Out     $50.00

Supply your own XBOX      -$200.00

Shipping is $50.00 in the continental US. Contact me if your outside of the US.

Heres how the ordering will work. Click the Paypal button on the bottom of this site and you will pay $500.00 upfront nonrefundable deposit. This gets your name put on the list (trust me, its gets full quick) and gets me working on your XBOOK. After its completed, you will pay the remainder and shipping and your XBOOK will be shipped out! Once I start on your unit, it will take 2-3 weeks to complete. There may be people in front of you, so be aware of that. If you have any questions at all, please go to my contact page HERE and send me a message! I will be in contact with you through the building process and will make it personalized for you!

Inside this unit is a Microsoft XBOX 360 Slim. The xbox has not been altered in any way that would be illegal on xbox live. It has no performance modification or enhancements. The XBOOK is simply just a plastic case that holds a XBOX inside with a LCD Screen. I am in no way affiliated with Microsoft or Xbox.  It does not have a xbox warranty as you loose the warranty as soon as you take a xbox apart. I will guarantee it will not be DOA and will give you a 30 day warrantee on the XBOOK to fix any problems it may have that is not from user abuse. It is non returnable as these are custom made for each individual buyer.

XBOX 360 Laptop

 

Many of these have been floating around the Internet the last couple of years, and usually they seem to have an astronomical price tag attached. It never looked that difficult to make, and I have always wanted to give it a go. So after I finally got around to obtaining a CNC Router (small one, but great for learning!) I came up with this!

I have never done ANY cad design/drafting or any CNCing at all in my life. But have always been interested, so what better way to start then buying your own and start cutting stuff! I started with some small logos on particleboard, then thought I should have a good project that has a good goal at the end, and this is where the XBOX laptop was born, at least for me.

I started originally looking after other peoples design features and the way they organized the inside of the laptop. I spent about an hour arranging the boards on a make shift case trying to find the best way I thought to have them laid out. I ended on the XBOX pretty much being in its stock layout, along with the LCD being in its stock layout.

After getting a feel for where things were going to sit, I measured everything and went on to try to conquer the design. The only piece of software I had that could produce dxf was adobe illustrator, so I gave it a shot. Here is the top of the inside of the laptop.

I knew I needed excessive vent holes, but I wanted them to look sharp and classy. So that is what I came up with. I liked the look! (and If you want one, we can work something out to put any word in there!).

So off to the world of routing all of this! I can’t say how many plastic particles ended up in my garage, but it was crazy, took a whole day vacuuming after I was done! I learned a lot from doing this first laptop, from what not to do, to some tricks to make it better. I was proud of the first one, yet it showed me areas of improvement for my future one (as this one is already sold to a friend, I miss it already). 

The router worked great, and I am sure I will post something later about my new CNC, but I do want to talk about it a bit here. It was interesting learning the different bits, and how much manual work is still involved, like sanding and positioning the materials, and a lot of trial and error! The machine worked rather well, although I did run into some problems. All is good now, and I feel very confident in my CNCing abilities! Great first project! Check out the video here of the router in action.

(yes, the DVD opening is not correct here, I fixed that after I took the pic)

Now I went onto placing the parts inside of the case. Still, even with the DVD drive here, the FAN on the CPU is the highest point. I left the metal casing, only because it helps with heat problems, and keeps everything aligned quite well. Plus a big positive with this way is you don’t need to extend near as many cables, most stock lengths work (except for obvious things, like ring of light and USB ports).

After getting all of the pieces together, soldering all my connections on the board, and hooking it all up…. Of course it didn’t work! What would a project be without trial and error….. and more trial and error.. and more…. But after many days of playing with things, discovering what works and what doesn’t, I took it all apart and painted it.

I went with a dark green on this one, which I think is pretty sharp, I then went and etched it again with my router, which gave me nice white pinstripes. And then I also added some LEDs to the inside the give it a nice glow and backlit the buttons (not perfectly backlit buttons, but I like it)

The ring of light is extended nicely, and all of the XBOX functions, audio controls and the LCD controls are all on the bottom portion of the laptop, and in the picture above, are all backlit. The speakers sound great, and as an added bonus there is a headphone jack that mutes the speakers automatically whenever a pair of headphones is plugged in. There is also the component on the side with a switch that chooses either the built in LCD or external component (sorry, impossible to display both at the same time). There is stereo audio out that is always enabled and is not amplified (so your stereo can amplify without any damage!). There are 4 USB ports on the side also that extend from the board along with the Ethernet port. Sorry, no kinect port is extended.  The Hard Drive is accessible by only removing the cover with 4 screws. You can pull it in and out like stock. Also, the “power brick” is internal. So the only cable you need is the black “universal power cable”. Makes hauling this around a breeze! There are no batteries in this unit, although I have not tried to put any in, but both of these devices (LCD and XBOX) are not made with any power saving features, so the batteries would not last long and would only make it heavier.

The screen is a 17” LCD that is very bright and very crisp. It has a native 720p Resolution and is a perfect size for this laptop.

I’m sure I could have made it thinner, but the work involved to save maybe a total of an inch was not worth it in my opinion, It would have made the price jump up a lot higher as well to you! So this is better for both parties involved! It’s approx 16.5×10.5×4.5. It has a 17” LCD HD 720p Internal display along with Internal Amplified Speakers, Component out, 4 USB, Ethernet, and a headphone jack. And since this is the XBOX 360 Slim, it has built in Wi-Fi as well. Which is great! No external antennas!   I can promise it’s not a pain to carry around; it feels sturdy and makes for quite the bragging conversation and LAN parties!

Now for the fun part, how much it will cost!

I purposely built this unit to be easier to put together than other ones I have seen to keep cost low for both of us. A lot of time is involved still and especially in all of my initial startup times. I am not looking to take advantage of people and charge too much. But I cant give it away either. I can promise it is a fraction of the cost of others I have seen for sale. I can also do discounts if you can provide an XBOX (must be a 360 slim) and/or if you don’t want some of the features, like LED and Component/Audio out ext.

So for the whole setup you see (4gb)

$1600.00

If you provide your own XBOX (360 Slim)

-$200.00

No LEDs (Vent lights and Backlit Buttons)

-$50.00

No Component Out

-$50.00

No Paint

-$100.00

Extras

250 GB HDD XBOX Slim (Extra Cost of unit)

+$100.00

Custom Logo engraving (see below)

FREE

1 Wireless Controller (if I provide XBOX)

FREE

Shipping

In the United States (exc. Hawaii and Alaska)

$50.00

Outside of the United States (inc. Hawaii and Alaska)

Email for quote

If you decide to purchase one, I can guarantee the process to be personal and will try to custom engrave any logos you would like (NO COPYWRITED LOGOS). If you have a clan tag, or your name ext, As long as you can provide a detailed picture or vector, I can etch it into the laptop (like the XBOX logo) If you would like other words on the air vents, talk to me, we can see what we can come up with. You can choose the paint color, button colors, vent colors and LED Colors (to an extent) as well. Ill admit the paint is not perfect, it is honestly spray paint with high gloss. It is not horrible, but I am not a professional painter. It does not look bad white at all! But please note, if you don’t paint it, the logos that are etched white, with be “white on white” Still looks cool, but not as noticeable.

I will work closely with you and do my best to make sure you get exactly what you would like. But please email me with ANY questions you may have and then you can decide if you’d like one!

Depending on how many orders I have lined up and supplies available will depend on how fast you can receive yours. To just be safe, count on two weeks after I start yours (could be sooner, but like to estimate longer). But if you want to be put on the list, you must send me half of the cost, which is non refundable, to pay for supplies and time, after it is finished, the other half will be expected along with shipping. Once all is received, it will be shipped out UPS and should get to you within 3-5 days.

I DO NOT HAVE ANY PS3 LAPTOP PLANS RIGHT NOW. Maybe in the future, or if you want to pay more (significantly more) to have one made specifically email me.