Cheap, Easy-to-Mod NetBooks Are a Hacker’s Paradise

Thanks to their utilitarian design and low prices, netbooks are inspiring a booming subculture of hackers souping up their liliputers with touchscreens, GPS and unauthorized operating systems like Apple’s Mac OS X.

As netbook sales continue to soar, more and
more tech-savvy grease monkeys are dismantling netbooks to add fancy features including back-lit keyboards, GPS and longer-lasting batteries.

"I’d say it was a work of passion and love for computing," said San Diego resident David Winter, who has crammed three solid state drives into a netbook, upping the
capacity to 128 GB. (Normally, netbooks only ship with solid state
drives in double-digit capacities.) His next project? A laser espionage microphone that he plans to implant into a netbook, which will enable him to record sound from behind someone’s window.

Netbooks may seem like unlikely devices to attract the interest of hardware hackers, who traditionally have been drawn to bigger iron. Compared to full-size laptops, netbooks are low-powered and have limited feature sets. But in the face of a broad economic meltdown, hacking a $400 netbook makes more sense than risking a pricier, full-featured laptop.

Netbook modding is becoming so popular, Winter has launched a netbook-modding business: Winter Computer Solutions, which mods customer’s netbooks with GPS, Bluetooth, DVD readers or HDTV tuners.

Winter, who runs his burgeoning business on his netbook, is known for his remarkable netbook-mod stunts.
He once sold an Asus Eee PC netbook sporting every mod you
can imagine: A 7-inch touchscreen, Air Play for transmitting FM radio,
an overclocked processor, a Bluetooth adapter — and the list keeps on going.

DIY Devices, an up-and-coming electronics store, is planning to sell a kit called the Aeeeris, which will convert netbooks into tablets. Though a kit makes the procedure sound easy, converting a clamshell netbook into a tablet is considered an extreme mod — it’s not for the faint of heart. Available for a $60 pre-order, the kit includes a base, but a touchscreen must be purchased separately.

Another netbook modding nut goes by the handle "JKK." He hosts a website dedicated to
tutorials on netbook modding, and he says hacking mini notes is so trendy because it’s generally very easy — even for non-engineers. JKK Mobile’s most
popular hack was installing a stylus-controlled touchscreen on an Asus
EEE PC, which JKK said was simple enough to do with a $50 kit from a Chinese manufacturer.

"The easiest things can actually be done by anyone," he said in a phone
interview. "You don’t even have to open the whole device."

Brad Linder, writer of Liliputing, a blog devoted to ultraportable devices, thinks there’s even more behind the netbook modding craze. He noted that the modder community is continuing to
make hacking netbooks easier because there’s a wealth of knowledge on
the internet — forums, blogs and even instructions provided by Dell — discussing
how to dissect them.

"It’s not like people haven’t been hacking hardware for years as
well, but I feel like these little machines have become a paradise for
hackers," said Linder. "While [netbooks are] designed to have low-income audiences,
educational markets and kids, the people who mod these the most are
nerds."

Making it easy, netbooks are all very similar in
terms of specification and build. Practically every new netbook
features a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor with either a 9- or 10-inch
screen; the variations between models are very minor, which is why
modding generally remains simple with the release of each new netbook.

And
despite the general principle that smaller gadgets
should be more difficult to customize in terms of hardware, Linder noted that their insides —
such as hard drives, 3-G cards and so on — are getting smaller, too, so
it’s not too difficult to cram more features into these netbooks.

Linder, however, said he shies away from hardware mods and that he’s more of a "software guy."

Like many, he’s running a netbook hacked to run Mac OS X Leopard. The process took him a couple of hours —
but that’s not long compared to the amount of time consumers will have to wait for Apple to finally deliver a netbook.

"People were talking about Apple coming out with a laptop under $800 for the first time, and someone already made one and it’s a
netbook," he said. "I’m really impressed that the user community is
able to accomplish things that even major manufacturers aren’t doing."

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Photos courtesy of David Winter, Charlie Sorrel, JKK