195204

Open Architecture Laptops

March 9th, 2000 08:10 AM

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.

195205

March 16th, 2000 08:10 AM

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://TheFlyingPenguin.com

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