gbhill said:
Can you build a laptop at home?
Yes, but it is not practical. I priced one barebones
laptop and it was $1000. And it still needed the
processor and other expensive parts to be put in it.
It makes for a very expensive project by the time
you are finished.
To make the DIY construction of laptops pay off,
someone needs to buy pallet-loads of parts, to
get the discounts. There is a need to eliminate the
middleman. You see, the middleman knows that a laptop
is a "premium item" and there is juicy profit to be
made from the potential customers. As long as that
distribution model and pricing policy exists, we
won't be building them at home.
And the other thing is, there is a real danger
that when you are finished, the thing you built
might not have a very good battery life. A lot of
effort goes into trading off performance for
battery life, and a home builder would be tempted
to put the highest performance MXM video module
and processor possible in their project. Such a
laptop would be a great gamer, but you could never
rely on it to take notes in class.
(MXM defined)
http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjE1
Paul
