After the success of the Tuxedo-less
Wallstreet, the PowerBook G3 sat on the shelf for a while.
Then Apple ditched the PowerPC for Intel! I had a bright idea:
why not repaint my Wallstreet in a nice blue and apply a PowerPC
logo prominently on the lid? I'd use it to make my own little
statement on what I think about the Intel transition...
That's just what I did. I picked up a can of blue Krylon Fusion
at the local crafts store and went to town. Along the way, I consumed
some Blue Paddle
Pilsener lager from New Belgium brewery. It's my favorite American
Pilsener. That's where the name came from. I'm still not certain
that's the right name for this modification, though, so maybe
it will change at some point...
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 To
do this right, you really need to strip down the Wallstreet.
That means you'll need a small Phillips head screw driver
and a Torx T-6 screw driver. It also may help to have a
small nylon pry tool or a small flat head screw driver to
help separate the display bezel. Other than that, the only
tools needed are some masking tape (I used the blue
3M masking tape for painters), spraypaint (Krylon Fusion
works great), and a place to do the dirty deed.
 I won't spend a long time describing in minute detail
just how I masked out all the parts. I won't insult your
intelligence, as this really ought to be completely self-evident.
Let it suffice to say that I masked all the parts that I
didn't think should be painted. The 3M tape is really fantastic
- it forms a great seal and definitely stops any paint from
slipping under. It's a little more expensive than the yellow
stuff, but it is so much more effective. This is really
a case of "you get what you pay for." Of course,
I also completely stripped the PowerBook. I removed ALL
the electronics and optical parts to make sure that I wouldn't
inhibit the functionality of the PowerBook in any way.
For the PowerPC logo, I downloaded
a logo from IBM's website, resized it, printed it, and used
it as a template. I placed a strip of 3M tape along the
back of the display and placed the enlarged logo over that.
Pressing down heavily with a ballpoint pen, I traced out
the logo's outline. This caused an indentation of the logo
outline to form in the 3M tape. Finally, I retraced the
outline of the logo in the tape with an X-Acto™ knife.
This left a reverse stencil on the Wallstreet's lid so that
the PowerPC logo would remain PowerBook grey while the rest
of the PowerBook would be blue.
I then took it all out to
the garage, and over the course of a beer (okay, a beer
plus a few hours), I applied two coats of paint and allowed
sufficient time for the PowerBook plastics to dry.
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