Silicone covers for T60 Ports

[filter]

Hey Forum,
I love my thinkpad. And since I don't use a cover, since the T60 is rugged enough to widthstand almost any physical torture I could think of, there is something that has been bothering me for a while. When deciding between a macbook pro and a thinkpad, I saw that for macbooks there are some nice little silicone covers available, that you can stick into either all or some of the ports that you don't use that frequently. So to enhance the lifespan of my thinkpad, I was hoping to find the same but without any luck yet.
Any tips?
Another issue:
Will it save me battery time, when removing my DVD drive and just patching the hole up with a dummy cover? It will save some weight, so I was considering, just letting the DVD drive at home.

Thanks,
Vincent

[FlexOink]

I remember when I was a 10 year old kid I had some troubles with me ears. There was some fluid building up behind my ear drums. So they made a small incision in my eardrums, so the fluid could exit trough a little tube.

The problem was when I went swimming or took a bath, water could get behind my eardrums and cause ear infection and what not. So I went to this place where they had a yar of this moldable silicone rubber kinda stuff. They put that stuff in my ear, so it would fill all the folds inside your ear and auricle. Then they took the stuff out, and let it dry for a day. After a day we picked it up, and it has become this flexible rubber like material, in the shape of my ear.

This is interesting because you could use this same material to fill up, lets say a LAN-port, take it out, let it dry, and have a perfectly fitting custum port-cover.

I tried to look for the name of the material on dutch websites, because I dont know the name of these things in English, but couldnt find anything. Perhaps you could check with an ear-store, where they sell hearing aids and such, thats where I got mine.

[christopher_wolf]

For the UltraBay, they have a Travel Cover which patches the slice quite nicely if you don't fancy on having a drive of sorts in there; it is basically an empty, strengthened frame. It also saves weight. Thinkpads used to have rubber covers for the ports a long time ago (my 701c has them). Off the top of my head, I can't recall any places that make those for laptops, but there are a few places that make them for cell phones and PDAs as those devices like to use such covers alot.

You can buy specialized molding plastic, heat it, mold it into the outside shape of the port (no real need to go too deep), and then let it set. Those should do quite nicely, yet I also forgot where one could readily obtain them.