[Arm-netbook] 15in laptop LCD up on PCB1

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 9:31 PM, Nico Rikken <nico at nicorikken.eu> wrote:
> Great to see further progress. Keep it up!

 :)

> At the Dutch T-Dose conference had a couple of visitors at the
> FSFE-booth mentioning how great it would be if finally a totally free
> laptop would become available. Have referred them to this project
> because this seems the only sensible approach to reach this ultimate end
> goal, and because it shows just how difficult it is to achieve this goal
> in a voluntary effort.

 in a word... yes.  i had to make some... interesting design decisions
shall we say - going for example with a custom 3D-printed case instead
of attempting to work with china-based factories [who will not respond
to enquiries for anything less than 10k orders, because they know the
cost of injection-mold casts].  and that took 6 *MONTHS* to complete
the [15] parts needed, which is just a staggering amount of time -
waay more than i was expecting.

 keeping it simple - going with USB2 not USB3.  cutting out all hard
drives and using USB or MicroSD storage.  finding a low-power 15.6in
screen (sub 5 watt).  keeping the power consumption to under 15 watts
so that a single-cell battery charger IC could be used instead of
needing multiple cells (which wouldn't fit into the casework design
anyway)...

 a whole boat-load of details all of which basically steer things in
ways that you might not have considered at the outset...

> Getting a fully free laptop is certainly easier
> set then done.

 yeah.  there's quite a few efforts popped up in the past year,
including http://www.powerpc-notebook.org.  they're going to run into
the same challenges, and i hope that they have the good sense to read
the reports of the experiences i've encountered along the way, just
like i read the experiences of the openpandora, the kosagi laptop and
other projects and learned from those.


> Furthermore I couldn't help but notice that one of the most restricted
> laptops in the world is being used to create the most free laptop in the
> world.

 *sigh* i knowww...  it's rather unfortunate that the higher perceived
quality of the proprietary software means you end up with a highly
profit-rich company that can afford to purchase the best components
and make the highest quality hardware products.  first thing i did
though was blow away the OS, install rEFInd, and boot up debian.  i'm
not interested - at all - in the proprietary OS, i want a hardware
product with an exceptionally high resolution screen, light weight,
good build quality, and high specs all round for the money.... and now
that i've got one, i won't replace it for 5-8 years.

 at the time i _did_ try to buy an IBM laptop... their web site
failed, at the time, however, preventing and prohibiting me from
giving them any money!

 later on i'll be able to tackle creating high-end hardware - not
entirely sure about how to go about that, yet.  have to see what SoCs
are available in 5-8 years time, as well as what display output
standards become commonplace.

 i can say that i am most certainly *NOT* going to be buying a
smartphone.  ever.  i bought *nine* HTC hand-helds back around 2002 to
2005, i was one of the early reverse-engineers working on removing
wince from HTC phones and replacing it with openembedded-built
GPE/Familiar based on Angstrom Linux.  so i've made the decision: i'm
not going to own another smartphone - ever - unless i've made it
myself.

 laptop/workstation however.... yyeah, i have to have something
otherwise i can't get anything done at all!

l.