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Building a Custom Laptop to Your Specifications?
swordsaintzero asks: "I am not happy with the options presented to me in the laptop market. The system that comes closest, Alienware, costs more than my last car, and still doesn't have exactly what I need! Even Google didn't seem to come across any sites detailing anyone who had built a laptop from scratch. Does someone out there know of such a site? If not, does anyone know the motherboard brand being used in the Alienware Exteme series? If I can get some decent leads, I will post the ensuing mayhem, as I attempt to build my own."
Every computer I've ever owned cost more to purchase than my current car. What's your point?
Custom laptops? Can't help there.
It should be noted, however, that Alienware actually buys their laptops from a company called Clevo, paints 'em green, and resells them for $600 more. You can buy identical laptops for much cheaper from other Clevo resellers, like Sager. Check pctorque.com and powernotebooks.com for "Alienware" laptops without the expensive paint. Of course, they're still ridiculously expensive.
Scratched Emulsion
...are a compromise from the start. These highly integrated and mini-sized parts are not off the shelf components. You just can't get the level of customization that you can on a desktop. Someday you might, but not today.
I'd say make the best educated decision you can about the system you choose--you can't ask for more then that.
Just bought an IBM Thinkpad X31--no idea what the mobo or options card brands are, but it sure works just fine. And the media slice is cool--can go laptop with it on or ultra-portable without it.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
- What you're looking to spend
- What features are must-haves
- Whether your laptop will also dock and be your primary home PC
- Do you need wireless connectivity?
- Will you be doing mostly office-type work, development, or games?
There are a lot of variables here.Once we have this information, we can then tell you to go do your own fucking research because this is not a help desk.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
alienware sales sager notebooks at a 90% markup. A lot of other peolpe sell them. powernotebooks for example . Just google them.
Oh really?
I think the Alienware laptops are mostly built by Clevo (story here, brochure or press release here). I had someone come in with a Clevo quote recently. They look like capable machines.
Intel Pentium(R) M, 1.4GHz,14.1 SXGA+
1GB,DDR,266MHz 2DIMM
60GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
2x CD/DVD burner (DVD+RW/+R)
Intel Pro 2100 Wireless Card
Now that's a fine system, even considering the obligatory Microsoft tax and WinXp Home pre-installed. Check place like SlickDeals.net for Dell coupons and you should be able to get your system within $2,000-$2,500.
I'm sorry to say, as several other posters have already pointed out, that laptops are pretty much inconfigurable beyond "Do you want DVD or CDRW with that?" The best thing you can do if you are in the market is look for a model that most closely fits what you want to do with it, and how you will most likely use (abuse) it. For example, if you know you are rough with technology, might I suggest a Panasonic ToughBook? If you are looking for style and sophistication, perhaps Apple is calling your name? If you want a gaming platform, you can go with your alienware. Several manufacturers are coming out with 17" and widescreen laptops (Apple and Dell for example), and if you want something that can keep going on batteries for several hours, perhaps you should investigate Centrino laptops.
YOU must decide what is important in your new purchase, and decide how important. If customization and configurability is really that important, perhaps you are asking the wrong question? Maybe you should be asking, "Do I really need a laptop? What would a laptop give me that a regular computer will not, and can I live without it?"
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
You can't just go build a laptop from scratch. You can build awfully small portable computers, but at a certain point you have to get a little specialized. Until things get so small and compact that there becomes a standard component interface for laptops this will continue to be almost impossible without a team of engineers and some big-buck manufacturing tools.
The closest I ever saw was a laptop that used standard desktop processors; had two MiniPCI slots, two PC-Card slots and took the "relatively" standard 144 pin Micro-DIMM memory modules. This allowed for some flexibility but it came at a huge sacrifice for battery life (with the desktop processor)
Breaking it down:
1) Case: this is usually where it starts. The design of the system will be centered around how BIG it's supposed to be when it's done. Most everything follows the design of the case.
2) Motherboard: Laptop motherboards are nothing if not proprietary. 90% of the peripherals are built in. The only things that most modern laptops leave "off" the motherboard are ethernet, wireless lan, modems (and often not even all of those) Form follows form here. The motherboard is the largest component, so it generally takes the shape of whatever empty space is left after everything else goes in the case. Sometimes laptop motherboards are split into two or three pieces to twist around hard drives, cd-rom's and cooling equipment. Again, no standard form factor.
3) Peripherals: (sound/video/firewire/usb/serial/parallel/etc) None. It's all on the same board, remember? If you get a MiniPCI slot, you can find a few peripherals to plug into it (but nothing like what you can buy in a pci card). I know of the following MiniPCI peripherals:
Network Cards (you'll have to find somewhere to put the RJ45 port)
Wireless Network Cards (youll have to find somewhere to stash the antennas)
Modems (youll have to find somewhere to put the RJ11 plug)
Crypto accelerators (used in embedded devices like the Soekris router appliances)
4) HDD: ah ha. here you get lucky! You can get all manner of 2.5" HDD's up to and including some slick new 7200 RPM guys! Just watch your height and power requirements
5) Ram: Ditto. Typically dictated by the motherboard, though you do have some flexibility here
6) LCD: LVDS has helped a lot towards standardizing an interface between a laptop's graphics system and the screen itself, but you'll still need to find a compatible panel and LVDS driver. You can do some googling on LVDS if you want, but it's essentialy like a low level form of DVI. There are presently single, dual, and quad LVDS systems (based on how many pixels you need for a panel)
7) CPU: AFAIK, none of the manufacturers even sell their mobile CPU's in a socketed configuration. It's probably going to be built onto a motherboard.
Finally, very few companies actually make their own laptops. Most come OEM from some company in Taiwan, and even though some are assembled by the vendor, almost none are manufactured by other companies. Dell doesnt build their own laptops; I'd put lots of money on Alienware not making their own either. If you can find the OEM for alienware, and the same computer is not made exclusively for them, then you can get close to a "build your own" but if all that entails is selecting the screen, hard drive, ram, and color of the case, you're still a long way off.
~GoRK
There are places you can go to get CUSTOM BUILT laptops, they are just not online stores or common chains. You need a plane ticked to Taiwan, or somewhere else in SE Asia.
A friend of mine picked up a custom laptop in Malaysia with 3GHz P4, with DVD burner, 1Gig Ram, and a slew of other features he wanted... for under $2500 Australian (that's ~$1700 US!!!)... The kicker is that this was back in February!
So it can be done... You just need to be holidaying in the area at the time...
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Excellent collection of info, btw.
Regarding newer laptops and CPU sockets:
I upgraded my Sony GRX570 (1.6Ghz) to a 2.0Ghz because it's a socketed P4-M platform.
Before CPU removal.
After CPU removal.
The entire post is at Vaio Village for those curious. (Yes, same username)
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Cheers,
Bill
bamph
Dell laptops are typically some of the most upgradable PC-based laptops out there. (Although it's an increasing trend in upgradability in general.)
The Dell Inspiron 8000 series allowed upgrades to:
CPU (socketed)
Video card (Socketed in a special package)
RAM (SODIMMS like everyone else)
HD
Optical drives
They had multiple display options, but that was something you could only choose at purchase time.
Compatible laptops in the C-series 8000s were the 8000, the 8100, and 8200. A very common upgrade (which made Slashdot) was to upgrade an I8000's GeForce 2 Go to the GeForce 4 440 Go (GF4 440MX) from the 8200. You could also buy socketed P4-M processors to upgrade the 8200. I've heard rumors that the "Precision" variant of the I8000 had a Quadro option that was the equivalent of a GeForce 4 4200 Go (i.e. a Ti4200), so the 8x00s might be upgradable to GF4Ti specs.
The new 8500 is not socket-compatible with the previous 8000s, neither is it media-bay compatible. The CPU socket might be the same, the video cards are a new form factor though. It will probably be upgradable with parts from one or two successor generations, like the 8000 could accept many parts designed for the 8100 and 8200.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
If you check out my journal you will get a detailed description of what I've been doing and why. In a nutshell: I'm trying to build a handheld computer that delivers adequate performance with maximum flexibility and battery life. The target design will have a small (7-8 inch) VGA screen, a moderately slow processor (100-200 MHz ARM), moderately sized hard disk (10-20 GB, 2" IDE), a moderate amount of RAM (32-256 MB), and run off of conventional rechargable batteries (8 AA NiMH cells) for at least 8-hours on a single charge.
Just to build the prototype will take several months and cost at least $1000 (probably several times that, when all is said and done). If I go to production, I can probably get the cost down to $300 per unit (not counting NRE costs), but the selling price will still be up in the $500 range.
The only way I am able to do any of this is that I am abandoning any kind of PC compatability: This device will never be able to run Windows or play flashy games (though it will run a regular, non-embedded, version of Linux). I've had to give up on all kinds of features that seemed like they should be simple: I don't have a clamshell case because the engineering is too complex for me to do myself and I don't have a keybaord because I couldn't find a source for laptop-style keyboards. I'm still holding out for polymer-LiION batteries, but I haven't found anywhere that builds them on contract, yet.
This is not the same sort of task as building a desktop computer from white-box parts (which is only slightly harder than plugging together lego blocks). This is much closer to actual engineering: I'll be constructing some of my own breadboards to connect the SBC to the LCD and the IDE hard disk, as well as custom hardware to charge and monitor the batteries.