Ask anyone with kids what is the best part of the MacBook range and they'll tell you the Magsafe connector. Not only is it easy to pop in – the magnet snaps the plug right into place – but marauding rugrats can shoot by, trip on the wire and the computer stays safely, and smugly, sat on the desk.

It's not a new idea – deep fat fryers have been using the same tech for a while – but it hasn't yet appeared on other notebooks. Now, with some help from Instructables, you can roll your own for around $30:

It's effective, cool-looking, and breaks away cleanly when kicked.

We'd certainly disagree with the second point: it's anything but cool -looking, but a Magsafe is so practical we don't care. This would be an especially good mod for a netbook, a computer that is often used in unpredictable situations. The hack here, by Breath, was forced upon a Thinkpad.

The gist is that you add washers to the collar of the power plug and then glue on magnets, which then become the ground connection. Then, a washer is stuck to the outside of the socket on the computer and connected to the internal ground.

Next, you extend the pin inside the plug with a spring loaded aluminum tube so that it will contact the internal pin. That's it. Fugly but quick, easy and cheap. I'd try this on my MSI Wind if I wasn't planning on selling that piece of junk.

ThinkSafe: A Magnetic Power Connector for Thinkpads [Instructables via MSI Wind Forums]