[nylug-talk] DIY laptop?

[jh]

David Rosenstrauch wrote:

> It sounded like a cool route to me too and, having built a desktop in 
> the past, I was tempted to try it.  However, I quickly discovered the 
> one downside - it would have wound up being a good bit more expensive to 
> build one than to buy an equivalent laptop retail from one of the major 
> vendors.  (Dell, in my case.)
> 

It also looks like it hard to find truly small units, and that battery 
life on the "whitebox" units are not entirely competitive, either. It is 
hard to find a vendor that has everything that you need, too.

Asus or another one of these vendors should go direct to the consumer; 
then it might be an alternative. The folks reselling them are clearly 
not interested in getting a lot of business, not with their prices.

I'd love to see someone do for portable computing what Soekris did for 
appliances - come up with something that's cheap, open-source friendly, 
and really caters to the what OSS users want. Imagine an ARM-based 
portable (or VIA x86), under three pounds, that shipped bare-bones that 
had PCMCIA, CF slot for storage expansion (choose either microdrive or 
cheap CF card flash) and a mini-PCI slot (choose whatever wireless or 
combo that you want). The emphasis being mobile OSS productivity. I'd 
get one in a heartbeat.

Not sure that there'd be a market, tho, or a big enough one.


jh