What material is the lid made of?

I'm thinking of adding a little custom red to my lid.
Anybody know what the lid is made of and the paint type so I can get the correct paint?
Does doing something like this void the warranty?

 

Cow dung and pine oil j/k

 

it wont void the warrenty but i dont know the material

 

Well... just because YOURS is made that way doesn't mean mine is

 

Well I don't HAVE a laptop Either way, twas' a joke regardless of which notebook was mentioned..

 

And so was mine back... What notebook are you planning on getting?
Read my review in my sig.

AGAIN.... Does anyone know what material the lid is made of? Until I hear otherwise, I'm assuming it is plasic?

 

Its Plastic on the M1330

 

The lids are magnesium (definitely not plastic). They are cast magnesium alloy AZ91D to be exact Also, they aren't painted, they are powder coated.

 

It depends what color you have. Red and blue are microsatin, white and black are a glossy plastic exterior. All the lids have a cast magnesium shell.

Are you planning on painting over the existing lid, or sanding it down first?

 

Now THAT is the info I needed! You will be repped.
Now, what kind of paint should I use? Automotive paint? I was going to use model areosol paint, but not now. I'm thinking metalic ruby red. Since the notebook is new, I'll just lightly prep it and then paint.

It's not like I'm a novice when it comes to painting notebooks, Here is one of my notebooks I painted:

 

Nice, that HP laptop looks sweet. I dunno what would be the "best" paint, but I would assume a quality automotive paint should get the job done since that's what most of the boutique PC makers use for their custom colors.

Worst case, I'd give it a light sanding before painting just to be sure it sticks. My crimson red with the microsatin finish is pretty rough, but anything I paint I always sand first as a rule of thumb.

 

That was automotive paint I used on the HP. I'm thinking of finding automotive metalic ruby red, same as on the 40th aniversary Corvettes.

With a notebook, masking real good is the secret. I plan on lightly sanding with 2,000 grit, then going over prep conditioner that cleans ALL grime of any kind off before the first primer coat. Next would be spraying several very light coats and letting it dry overnight between each coat. 4 primer, 4 base & 4 clear, (lightly sanding with 2,000 grit inbetween) then in 4 weeks, rub it out and wax it. I've painted several notebooks over the years with very good results. Always sold the notebook for more with the nice paint job too.

Now, my XPS is going to be a tad different from the current red XPS's. The round Dell logo will stay black as well as the black strip where the chrome XPS logo is. Very similar to the way the red XPS 1710 were:
Lots of very cool photos of that XPS here:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red+XPS+1710+photos&um=1&ie=UTF-8
and NFR own review of it with pixs here:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2887&review=Dell+XPS+M1710

And here are a lot of cool pixs of our current red XPS's
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&q=red+XPS+1530+photos&ie=UTF-8

 

Man that is one sweet blue colour on the HP.

 

Heh, you're obviously much more hardcore on painting than I am I sand w/ 1200/1600 grit, then 1 primer, 2 finish, 2 clear. And even just doing that much tests my patience:laugh: I haven't painted a laptop, but I've done a couple PC cases and I used to paint my old RC cars with some fancy masking/patterns (real ones that you actually gotta put together ).

 

crash said that the lids are made of:
cast magnesium alloy AZ91D

Summary
Magnesium and its alloys have high potential for application in automobiles, computer equipment, and portable tools. Recent progress in manufacturing impurity-free technology has dramatically reduced the corrosion damage that has been the main drawback in the use of magnesium and its alloys. We prepared samples by applying a die cast paint to a high-purity magnesium alloy and conducted different surface treatments, then evaluated the corrosion resistance of practical coating materials by subjecting samples to representative accelerated tests, such as the salt spray test and exposure to the atmosphere. An atmospheric galvanic corrosion test provided basic data on galvanic corrosion of magnesium alloys coupled to dissimilar metals and alloys.

 

Actually, that was snork

I was saying that the interior shell was made of magnesium, not the outer covering that the user comes in contact with.

 

Shh...here's my source http://www.intlmag.org/showcase/MgShowcase3_Dec07_Final.pdf

Specifically its about the M1330, but it applies to all XPSs

 

From tinkering with my system. The lid, bottom cover and internal frame/chassis are magnesium. The sides of the LCD (silver parts) and the palm rests are aluminum, the rest is plastic.

 

Hey thanks! That was great info!