Originally built for fun, Datamancer says the steampunk laptop is ready for production almost five years later.
(Credit: Datamancer.net)
Now that you have the opportunity to own your own Victorian-era steampunk laptop, you can finally compute like it's 1899.
Richard "Doc" Nagy, who describes himself as a "steampunk contraptor, technical artist, and jackass-of-all-trades" first built a steampunk Windows XP laptop for fun nearly five years ago. Lately he's been busy shopping around his Victorian-era keyboards at CES and elsewhere, but now he says he's ready to make that sweet steampunk silicon action available to the public.
This week Nagy announced that he is ready to start taking preorders on a batch of steampunk laptops that will be updated and redesigned to reflect numerous technological advancements, both in laptop systems and in Nagy's own workshop.
These new versions will be better and faster than my original prototype, featuring cutting-edge internal components capable of running any of today's games and other software. They will also be much lighter and slimmer, so as to actually still be "portable" and as convenient as a standard laptop, and have a much more refined and professional design while retaining the elegant Victorian styling of my other work.
Nagy says he says he'll start with PCs for the new batch (for now, he's only speculating about their weight), but will consider giving Macs the steampunk treatment as well.
He's setting a preorder price of $5,500 per laptop, but says he expects "the anticipated retail price for future batches will probably be $7,500 or more." He says several customizations will be available, including recessed gold foil maps, and different wood stains and key fonts. But what about matching accessories, you ask? Don't worry, Doc's got you covered:
"I also plan to include a key-shaped USB flash drive with every laptop that will also open a brass lock on each machine. "
While Nagy is knocking two grand off the preorder price for the first batch, he is looking for a 50 percent deposit. All in all a small price to pay for the ability to host the coolest "City of Lost Children" watch party ever. Here are a couple more shots of Nagy's original protoype:
(Credit: Datamancer.net)
(Credit: Datamancer.net)
