The Open Source Laptop and the Golden Age of Open Hardware

An anonymous reader writes to this short feature featuring "Andrew 'Bunnie' Huang on why he decided to build an open source laptop, how the slowing of Moore's Law is making it easier for individuals and small outfits to compete against major corporations in the computer hardware market and what hobbyist hardware makers in the U.S. could learn from China's Shanzhai, famed for their cheap clones of the iPhone and other popular handsets."

Comments

I'd love to build laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies should sell laptop shells and let us buy the parts individually, just like a desktop computer.

Re:I'd love to build laptops

[MightyYar]

Those do exist. So-called "white box" laptops. My very limited experience with them is that getting your Windows install to play nice is a very similar experience to getting Linux to play nice with an off-brand laptop... it can be very time consuming, so if you value your time you just pay for some company to do it for you. And at the low end, you don't save any money because the components are largely part of the mainboard on crappy laptops. Thin-n-light like the Air is not possible at all.

Re:I'd love to build laptops

[Mashdar]

I even tell people these days that Linux is easier to install than Windows. While very new hardware can still be problematic (Llano drivers a few years ago come to mind), in general the installation process is:
1) Hit next several times.
2) Enter a user name and password.
3) Everything works.

Hunting for drivers on Windows, especially for legacy devices, hurts my brain. When I plug my 15 year old webcam into a Mint box it just works. So in that respect I agree with GP :)

Re:Slowing?!

[bobbied]

I snicker at the term "Moor's law" myself....

It's really more of a guideline and an old adage which is generally true but it is far from a "law".

Shanzhai? No

[DNS-and-BIND]

What does "could learn from China's Shanzhai" mean? Shanzhai electronics is crap. No, really, it is. Does it mean "use cheap garbage components that will fail 0-6 months after sale, and close up the company so we don't have to provide refunds"? Not that China's consumer protection laws mean a damn, anyway.

The whole article stinks of "d00d this is totally kewl, we should totally make, you know, a laptop. Then add shanzhai, then add bookbinding, then add "guerrilla hardware". WTF does guerrilla hardware even mean? This has more nonsense buzzwords than the latest corporate marketing press release.