Convert Old Laptop to Toughbook

[Talha Dada]

I have owned a Lenovo G460 (0677) for almost 4 years. I love it except for the horrible trackpad and cheaply made chassis which is broken in several places.

I am interested in putting the old motherboard and components in a new or used toughbook type chassis. I will mainly be using it for Army work purposes. I need it to have a built in CAC card reader and I would like to upgrade the RAM while I'm at it. I have very limited experience tinkering with laptops. Please let me know if this project is possible and fiscally reasonable. Thanks in advance.

Here is Lenovo's spec sheet for my laptop (except I run a "Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 450 @ 2.40GHz "):

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/pdf/notebooks/Essential/G-Series/Lenovo%20G460.pdf

 

[Talha Dada]

I can't install my personal programs or use personal USB drives on an Army laptop. There are a few other reasons why that is not an option. Besides this seems like a fun project if it doesn't waste too much money.