Have you ever looked at your laptop… then at your all-in-one printer/scanner/copier and thought they’d look better if they were smashed together to make a single device?
Probably not. But there’s still something oddly compelling about seeing it happen.
Mason Stooksbury took apart an old Dell laptop and an old Kodak printer and put them back together in a way that lets you lift the flatbed scanner cover to see the screen, pull out the paper feeder tray to use the keyboard. He calls the result the Comprinter and it’s weird… but also kind of fascinating.
The guts of the computer, including the motherboard and 2.5 inch hard drive are visible through the glass of the scanner. The 14 inch display has been connected to the cover. And the keyboard… has been replaced with a Bluetooth keyboard. He also crammed a set of speakers inside the printer case.
And when the computer’s not in use, you can just close the lid and printer tray… although the pieces of tape in the closed picture suggest it might not want to stay closed all on its own.
Stooksbury says his printer was broken when he started the project. But theoretically if you had a functional model you could do a similar case mod and continue using the printer… although you’d probably lose access to scanning functionality.
He says it took about 12.5 hours to construct this beautiful monstrosity out of a Dell Inspiron 1440 and Kodak esp3.2 all-in-one inkjet printer. You can check out a writeup of the build process or view a gallery of pictures showing the work-in-progress and the final results.
via MiniMachines and Hackaday
Looks like it’s not that much bigger than my old Compaq luggable. My second computer.
https://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.html
I like this hack. It actually puts the screen higher up in a more ergonomic position! A broken printer plus a laptop with a damaged case could be combined into this.
Reminds me of Bunnie Huang’s “open” laptop, in that all the parts can be seen.
https://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/460922-crowd-sourcing-open-hardware-laptop/