Oh my, this does look nice. Frederic Sebton has taken an old PowerBook and an IKEA side table (Ramvik is the model) and turned it into an arcade cabinet.

Sebton has basically taken a PowerBook apart and mounted the screen and computer guts back-to-back, with the screen showing up through a hole cut in the top of the table. He then used a piece of black cardboard and a piece of glass as the top-most layer, mounted an arcade style joystick in the cabinet’s drawer, and ka-boom: a nice arcade cabinet running Mame software on a PowerBook.

Seems simple enough, definitely a no-brainer if you’ve got an old laptop that you’re not using – it wouldn’t need to be a PowerBook, either. Any old laptop that can run emulation software should be able to work just fine.

Here are a couple more photos from the project’s page.

Frederic Sebton Mamebook Cocktail Table [via LifeHacker]

This is the strangest and, yet, most arousing thing I’ve seen in a while. It’s a German babe in a bikini smashing the begeezus out of a Powerbook. She must have been running BootCamp when the BSD appeared. They really like to smash gadgets and it breaks my heart. It’s a strange feeling because I hate to see gadgets being destroyed, but girls in bikinis seem to trump that.

It’s impossible to estimate how many keyboards I’ve gone through in my lifetime. What I can say is that if I used one of these things, I’d probably go through quite a good deal less.

I’ve been using one of these on my Powerbook for about a week now and I’ve been marveling at the stuff that can accumulate on top of it—stuff that would have previously ended up in the aforementioned underbelly. The utility is definite, but I’ve had trouble getting used to the rubberized texture. In other words, I prefer my keyboards to emit clacks rather than dull thuds.

So is it worth it? I’d say it really depends on the user. For laptops, it’s definitely useful, maybe even necessary. The problem is that it doesn’t really fit too snuggly. It actually just kind of rests on top of the keys.

For desktops, I’d say the gain is negligible. If you eat at your system frequently, then yes, it’s probably worth it. If, however, like me, you prefer to just get a new keyboard every few months, you should probably pass.

The iSkin is available for Macbook, Macbook Pro, Powerbook and Apple Keyboard. You can get an iSkins protector for $24.99, but if you’d prefer not to pay, I have one for the Macbook, the Powerbook and the Apple Keyboard. The first person to comment asking for one gets it. One per person and all that other noise.

Product Page

If you intend to work on a Mac, these are the guys to talk to. Amazingly, with their help, I’m only missing one screw. Usually I’d lose two or three five minutes into any teardown operation.

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