• “qes_x5″ circuit board (I’m guessing this is just the name they chose when designing the board)
• (6) CR2016 3V batteries (which appear to be lightly soldered in)
• QESA080713 display w/ 12-pin connector (this is the outside front cover display)
• QESA080718 display w/ 4-pin connector (this is the inside front cover display…aka the Ford ad)
• HEF4094BT 8-stage shift-and-store bus register
• 12F629 8-Pin FLASH-Based 8-bit CMOS microcontroller

This seems to operate at a very basic level.  Each display is separated into multiple sections (one display has 3 sections, the other has 11).  Each section is sent an on or off signal from the circuit board.  The display cannot show anything other than what it was designed to show.  So that means you can’t customize these to say whatever you want.  However, you could theoretically connect your own display to it, if you had one that would have either 4 or 12 inputs on it.

The power source also has potential to be modified.  Anyone care to remove the batteries and hook up some solar cells?

Even with the potential hackability, I’m having a hard time coming up with something useful for someone to make out of this.  Since the display screens currently operate in a serial manner (i.e. they have one wire per section that turns on/off), it’s not possible to make this into a real e-reader.  But only time will tell how people will try to hack these.  And…Esquire is encouraging people to hack them!

And see what Esquire has to say about recycling these magazines.