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I had a Lenovo Thinkpad X41 Tablet that I purchased a few years ago with high hopes of using it in the classroom. The idea sounded a lot better on paper and the tablet ended up not getting much use. Instead of selling it (goes for a couple hundred dollars these days), I decided to put it to better use by mounting it under a kitchen cabinet.

This way I can use it to listen to music, watch movies, or to look up recipes while I cook!

The process of mounting it was rather simple. You’ll only need the following:

• Industrial strength adhesive velcro
• Old laptop (preferably a touchscreen tablet)

I bought 4 feet of industrial strength velcro from Office Depot/Staples for about $10.  You won’t need 4 feet but it was the smallest amount it came in.  Unfortunately, the X41 is not a touchscreen tablet which means I need to have use digitizer pen instead of poking with my fingers.  Theoretically, any laptop could be mounted but tablets are best because of the swivel-able screen and light weight.

And of course, if you’re not looking to make the laptop removable/swappable, one could always use something more secure than velcro.

Note: Sorry for the poor iPhone 2G picture quality.

Step 1 – Put velcro under the cabinet
I would use the “hook” part of the velcro for this.  You’ll want to save the soft side for the underside of your laptop for comfort.  I also put an extra piece on the side for the power adapter. Make sure you leave room on either side in case you need to plug in USB devices later.

Step 2 – Put velcro onto the underside of your laptop
The basic idea is to put as much velcro on the underside as possible (making sure the velcro is higher than the laptop feet).  You’ll want to leave any vents uncovered and ideally avoid areas of high heat output.  I also removed the battery to decrease the weight.

Step 3 – Mount it up.
Make sure you let the adhesive set first before mounting.  I put a beach towel under the laptop for the first few days just in case it fell but it seems to be very secure.  I would worry about leaving the laptop running 24/7 in case the heat generated wears out the adhesive.  I keep my laptop on stand-by most of the time.

Step 4 – Set up the Software
Make sure you’re using a tablet-supported operating system (e.g. Windows 7/Vista/XP Tablet edition) and using either the video driver or some other software, flip the displayed image so that it appears right side up when in use.

That’s it, enjoy!  If you like this simple DIY project, check out my ethernet cable mod and IBM Model M Keyboard mod.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 2:24 pm and is filed under How-to, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.