Reporter Pans Open Source Laptop Kit TERES-I (theverge.com)

The Verge's Paul Miller has some harsh words for the $242 open source DIY laptop kit TERES-I from Olimex. Instead of buying one hyper-integrated board that has all of the laptop's brains and I/O on it, you buy several little boards and wire them together. Then you put them inside a mostly finished case built by Olimex -- although if you want to go ultra DIY you can 3D print your own case, too. Everything, from the shell's CAD design to the motherboard's wiring, is available on GitHub for perusal or modification, and the modular nature of the internals means you can add a more powerful chipset or modify just about anything you find unsatisfying about the computer if you have the know-how or if Olimex or others offer compatible parts.

But, unfortunately, almost everything about this laptop is unsatisfying right now. It runs a quad-core ARM64 chip, though x86 and MIPS chips might be offered later on. It has a tiny 11.6-inch screen, a huge bezel, a tiny trackpad, a cramped-looking keyboard, and a whole lot of plastic. The OS (Linux, naturally) runs off a microSD card. At least the LCD comes in a 1080p variant, because the default 1366 x 768 resolution is a real throwback. There's even 802.11n Wi-Fi, which has me questioning what decade it is.
But are there any better alternatives? In the comments share your own thoughts about open source laptop kits.

Comments

Re:Our Attitude To Tech Resources

[c]

I'm struggling a bit with the comment that "1GB is in fact completely unacceptable."

The assumption I'd make is that the reviewer is buying a small modular laptop to run what he considers lightweight laptop-style tasks... specifically, a modern (because nobody sane runs an out-of-date one) graphical web browser.

Having actually tried it, I'll agree that running a modern graphical web browser on a systems with 1GB of memory *is* painful.

I'll grant that this raises more questions than answers. Is it reasonable to need 2+GB of memory to run a silly browser? Is running a web browser the only sane workload for a small laptop? I'm comfortable saying "no" to both of those, but I guess that's why I'm just a lowly code grunt instead of a Verge reviewer...

Pompeii

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of a story a friend of me told me a couple of years ago.

She works for a consumer protection agency. One day, a lady (let's call her "customer") phoned her. She was furious. She had booked an organized trip to Pompeii, the renowned ancient Roman city, "preserved" under the ashes of Mount Vesuvius. "There were only destroyed houses!" she yelled at the phone "no shopping possibilities! Everything was dirty and broken!". She wanted her money back, and she wanted the agency to support her on that.

My friend had a hard time trying to explain to the customer that, actually, that's how Pompeii is supposed to look like and that no, she saw no chance in recouping the money.

So dear Mr. Miller, whenever you plan a trip to Pompeii, at least have a look at the relevant Wikipedia page beforehand and try to understand what it means.

Re:Our Attitude To Tech Resources

[Dutch Gun]

I actually owned a computer with 64K RAM, and I'd argue that yes, my modern computer is easily 30,000 times better than my original Apple II, especially if you compare on a dollar-per-dollar cost. That doesn't mean you can write a novel 30,000 time faster. Not all productivity scales up that way. However, my modern's computers photo-editing capabilities is infinitely better, because... hey, I couldn't even do that with my original machine. Nor could I render 3D graphics, or listen to digital audio, nor could I do thousands and thousands of other things that I can easily do with my modern computer. You just happened to pick a few capabilities that the old system *could* do.

I think that we sometimes lose sight of the absolutely insane improvements in system performance over the last 20-30 years - and the complete lack of progress that we see at the human interface.

Okay, this is a puzzling complaint. Have you missed the whole "touch-first UI" revolution with phones and tablets? What exactly is that but a massive improvement of human interface design and technology? My parents can pick up a smartphone and intuitively figure out how to use it. They were NEVER able to do with with CLI systems (which is why I got that Apple II), and only with difficulty with Windows, but have far few problems with smartphones.

Maybe you're talking exclusively about desktop interfaces? I'd argue we don't need significant improvements much beyond our existing paradigms. A mouse-type cursor, windows, menus, toolbars, buttons, and dialog boxes... these design elements work well for desktop systems. Attempts to "simplify" it have been nearly universally disastrous.

In other words, "If you can't do it in 1Gb of RAM, you are doing it wrong."

Except for editing images larger than 1GB, of course. Or composing music with extremely large sample sets (often dozens of GBs). Or rendering extremely detailed, high-fidelity 3D virtual worlds, like with modern videogames. Or many other examples I could come up with off the top of my head.

Sorry for sounding so contrary, as I do understand your point, but I think you're also neglecting to acknowledge the vast gaps in system capabilities, and not just the technical specs. Just because both systems could edit text doesn't put them anywhere in the same league. Old techies love to complain about "bloat", but one users "bloat" is another user's feature.