While Eee PC users wait to see whether the Aeeeris Tablet kit which will let them turn an Eee PC 701 into a tablet style computer ever materializes, it looks like at least one Acer Aspire One User has figured out how to build a cheap tablet PC out of his netbook.
There’s not much in the way of information at the moment, but there are a series of photos of the homemade UMPC over at the TodoUMPC forums. It looks like a full article with instructions could be coming soon.
It looks like the designer basically took an Acer Aspire One, swapped out the display for a cheap 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel touchscreen and somehow flipped the screen so that it lives where you’d normally expect to see a keyboard. That means you won’t be able to type on this machine. But it shouldn’t be that hard to install an on-screen keyboard, or even a custom Linux distro (like Ubuntu Mobile) which comes with one preloaded. For now it looks like the builder is running Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
via Mobility Site
or you could simply use a USB keyboard and not even worry about using a crappy on screen keyboard….
He probably did not swap out the display… he just got a touch screen panel (he has a photo of the kit) to lay over the existing LCD.
Yeah, I did not notice at first, but the keyboard is gone. I am wondering how this will affect the cooling of the device since the keyboard is the heat sink. One solution might be to keep the fan on all the time. I think the new Gigabyte convertible netbook does that.
All in all though… I like it though!