[Arm-netbook] Good netbook based on Cortex-A9

[lkcl luke]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 11:38 AM, Alejandro Mery <amery at geeks.cl> wrote:

> as the idea of crowdfunding the card has been rejected [1]

 only kickstarter!

> and 14" is
> kind of the worst laptop screen ever, can we have a crowdfunded [2]
> variant (or variants) of that eoma68 laptop for people who wants a
> *good* eoma68 laptop regardless what that "laaaarge company" plans to
> sell in .cn?

 ok.  right.  let's look at this seriously.  i've used rockethub
before: their advice is extremely good.  critical to the success is to
have a "pre-campaign" - a group of people who are prepared to:

 a) put up even a small amount of money, straight away i.e. on the
same day as launch.  this is *important*.  it says "this project isn't
a fly-by-night".  like any good party, nobody wants to be the first to
venture into the "empty space".

 b) constantly and i mean constantly talk on all the social networks
and other suitable locations and forums, in order to get past the
"overload / inertia" barrier.

 rockethub recommends that this initial seed group be at least 15
people, made up of friends and family.  where i went wrong with the
previous rockethub project was i made the mistake of assuming that my
family would actually help out, and i don't *have* 15 friends, so most
of the 30-day campaign was spent finding people just to get started:
it was of course too late.

 so.

 if we can get at least 15 people who are prepared to commit to a)
putting in even a small amount straight away (even if it's $15) just
to get the numbers off the ground b) push at least one message at
least once a day an announcement on at least one forum, mailing list
or social network - then i'll go ahead and start a project.

 but before doing that, we need to define what people would be
prepared to fund!  we have on one extreme end, gordan who loves 15in
1920x1080 laptops, and on the other extreme we have the 10in
form-factor with *shudder* 1024x600 LCDs.  i think we have enough
sense, collectively, to appreciate that skimping on the screen is bad?
thus a minimum can be set of 1280x768.

 i'd be inclined to go for adapting a straightforward preexisting 12in
x86 "no-brand" laptop.  12in with a 1280x768 (or 1280x800) LCD is the
right sort of size.  keep the battery the same, so that it can still
be bought off-the-shelf.  still make it possible to take a 2.5in SATA
drive.

 i'll revitalise the gpx32 (openpandora) thread, as well - there were
lots of people interested on there.

 it'll have to be made clear that the project *does not* include the
cost of development of the A10 EOMA-68 CPU Card: that's already being
taken care of.

 btw, wojchiek: later on, you can always get a Cortex A9 EOMA-68 CPU
card and upgrade.

l.