Pizza Delivery!

WHAT THE....!!! As my brother-in-law would say, but that's what this thing reminds me of; other than the fact its widescreen format vs. the traditional 4:3, or it would have looked like a really cool pizza box!
Good thing I cleared my work space of other machines, because this thing is a beast! I've worked on other 17" machines before, and they are all big, but this is different. The last 17" notebook I worked on was an HP DV9700 (don't ask- nVidia GPU, lawsuit, yada yada yada), but it was swoopy, thin and maybe a pound, pound and a half lighter. This thing is SQUARE....OK rectangular, but let me emphasize the "ANGULAR" aspect of it. Clevo has gone to very little trouble to disguise it for what it is.... What it is, is that 6' 6", 235lb girl who's going to play college basketball on scholarship. She doesn't NEED make-up. Make-up isn't going to help. It is what it is.

So, what is it? I was right, almost to the "T", however the former owner didn't do quite as much research and missed a few things. He/She/They put PC2700 DDR in it, making the bus run on 333 vs. the 400mhz that its designed to. Apparently the hard drive was bad, hence the "no disk found" error; a different PATA disk recognized without issue. It came without an optical drive, but that's a non-issue as well since it takes the standard (for that time) ATAPI interface, 12.7mm drive. Not being the IBM, Dell, or the HPs of the computing world, Clevo didn't need that drive bay to do anything but hold an optical drive, so no "special" (read hard to find and expensive) caddy or adapter cable. So I just grabbed a random junk CD-ROM drive that I had squirreled away and slid it in; recognized just like the hard drive. The screen lights up with no decernable issues. Got into the BIOS just fine and everything seems to be working on the machine. I threw in a Windows XPP disk and it spun up and started to load.......which is when the universal adapter I was using crapped out. It's rated to give 70w output. I was having it boot a machine that's rated to draw 150! So, not surprisingly the protection circuit kicked in and it "passed out". Oh; and it's UGLY..... remember the 6' 6" college bound basketball player? She's also got acne....
Hard to tell from this picture, but, trust me; she needs a make-over.

So, what needs to be done and how much is it going to cost? Here's the rundown so far:

• 1 "As Is" Clevo D47v "laptop" $77 after shipping off of eBay
• 1 Sony DVD Burner off of eBay $20 (just assume the prices I give you includes shipping unless otherwise noted)
• 1 20volt/7.5amp (150watt) power adapter $42...eBay of course
• 2 sticks of 1Gb DDR400 RAM, will probably run between $35-45, but should have been $26 if I hadn't of fallen asleep right before the end of an auction!
• 1 250Gb Western Digital PATA Hard Drive, Free- out of the drawer I put it in after taking it out of my wife's old computer.
• 1 can of Krylon Fusion (for plastic) spray paint, $4
  
• Masking tape from the garage, Free
• Disassembly instructions, Free from some random place on the Internet.

So, the total should run around $175 to 185. Less if I get lucky with the RAM or the A/C adapter. All in all, I don't think that'll be half bad, particularly if I can recoup some or all of the cost by selling his old machine...but that's a different story.
Yes, I'm completely aware that I'm probably not going to be able to replicate this for him, but for $175 vs. $3500; I can live with that! As for the performance, I think we'll be able to get by with a speedy P4/3.2Ghz machine for a few more years (after all, he'll only be 8), or at least until daddy gets itchy to build another computer!

What's next? The nitty-gritty, of searching out and buying cheap on eBay, then....THE TEAR-DOWN!!!

OH YEAH: any suggestions on asthetics, colors, what to do with that weird-shaped piece in the middle of the lid? I'm open, although, given that it's for my son; the colors will start and end with some version of green (kind of like Katie's computer is lavender).