Custom Laptops

[Justin Dugger]

Actually, it is possible, should you be willing to order say ten
thousand a month. This is probably the primary reason nobody sells
laptops designed for linux. The dirty secret of american computer
companies is the ODM, or Original Design Manufacturer.  Asian
companies exist that will design an entire laptop to your specs, among
other things.  They keep the design, you get to buy it and market it
under your own brand. iSupply has suggested that 86 percent of all
laptops were made by OEMs and ODMs. The largest one, Quanta, serves
Dell, Apple, MIT's one laptop per child project, HP, Toshiba, etc.  So
don't blame Dell or Apple engineers for designing a bad laptop, blame
them for accepting bad designs from another engineering firm, or maybe
requesting bad parts ;)

Of course, if you can figure out how to sell ten thousand laptops a
month, you probably already knew most of this. =(  But laptops are
pretty much all done via PCB, rather than expansion cards, so shopping
at newegg to build a new laptop is pretty much out of the question.

On 9/7/06, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins at tarcanfel.org> wrote:
> By the way, when I said it wasn't possible, I meant scratch-building your own
> out of components, not selecting features from a manufacturer, which
> obviously IS possible.
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