[pictures below]

For some reason, I decided to paint my old laptop. It is an old 486-75 with a 700mb drive and 12mb of ram. A dinosaur by today's standards. However with two PCMCIA ethernet cards, and Linux 2.4, it is a stateful NAT firewall/router. It also doubles as my "hackbox" ;-)

As for the painting process, I first went to the local hardware store, McGuckins. When I asked the paint guy, "I want to paint my laptop, I know plastic can be hard to paint, so what should I use?" He first said, "Well.... You shouldn't. But if you did, use this..."

I bought 4 cans of krylon spray paint: White sandable primer, white satin paint, blue satin paint, and high gloss crystal clear acrylic lacquer. I washed the heck out of the laptop with mild soap and water, and then a quick once-over with denatured alcohol. I found after painting my tower that wearing rubber gloves really helps keep it clean.

I taped off the keyboard, mouse, mouse buttons, plugs on the rear, and screen. I simply used masking tape, and an x-acto knife.

Next, I began painting. Wearing the rubber gloves helped here too because if I accidentally touched the wet paint, it would only leave little smudges, rather than quite noticeable fingerprints. Also, the gloves seem to stick less than plain fingers.

All in all, it turned out quite well. Now it looks as cool on the outside as it is on the inside!

Here is is!


It runs Linux, of course!


Here's where it lives, on the armrest of my couch, within range of my desktop.


Look how good the paint turned out!


Here's my room, full of 'puters! (count 'em, 5!)