Open Architecture Laptops
 

Does anybody else think it's about time we had this?
The bleedin' things only cost so much because of the prevalence of proprietary design. If laptop components and peripherals followed a universal standard, we could have the same kind of freedoms of choice as with our desktops. Moreover, I believe that such a scenario would promote the proliferation of cheap, powerful hardware with which to construct a laptop. We would see the emergence of machines that could truly be called 'gaming laptops'.

I know this isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I enjoy working on my notebook and I desperately wish it had more power.

Well, the market is pretty much forcing that to happen already. Laptop hard drives are pretty much standard now. Every one I've worked on at work has interchangeable drives - at least as long as you stay with decent name-brand manufacturers.

Batteries are no where near the proprietary nightmare they used to be - again, assuming you stick with a reputable name-brand.

We're just beginning to see some CD-Rom standardization too.

Ram has always been a problem, and it would be nice to see more standardization there.

Peripherals are pretty much standardized - they're either PCMCIA or USB and will work on any system.

However there will always be some proprietary components in a laptop - can't be helped. In the battle for weight versus power there has to be some design trade-offs. A lot of the customization also deals with heat disipitation. Since there's no room for a true heatsink for the CPU - often the heat sink is incorporated into the design of the chassis of neighboring hardware. For instance, the hard drive chassis might act as a heat sink for the CPU.

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The Flying Penguin http://www.voodooextreme.com/forums/smile.gif
http://TheFlyingPenguin.com

[This message has been edited by FlyingPenguin (edited 03-16-2000).]