[Arm-netbook] Any progress?

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 5:53 PM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> On Monday 29. June 2015 17.58.50 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
>> > Luke, others,
>> >
>> > Has there been any recent progress on the crowd-funding campaign or on
>> > other things?
>>
>>  ironically we just cross-over on what i've been up to, mostly it's
>> been the laptop casework whilst waiting for quotes from china assembly
>> companies.
>
> Right. What about the mini-desktop, though? Wasn't that the original crowd-
> funded proposal?

 micro-desktop.  yes.  still waiting to hear from the china assembly
team i selected: they're very thorough (and very busy), which is a
good thing.

>> > From what I've seen from following other lists, there's progress on Linux
>> > device tree support for various Ingenic JZ-series SoCs, which might have
>> > a beneficial impact on any jz4755 card that is produced.
>>
>>  great!  oh - it's a 4775 not a 4755.  the 4755 is a veerry loooow end
>> SoC, whilst the 4775 is an FSF-Endorseable 1ghz MIPS with a 720p video
>> decoder that has full source code available for it.
>
> Yes, I meant jz4775. After a while all the numbers blur into one another. ;-)

 :)

>>  anyway, yes: it was very unfortunate that the company in the USA -
>> despite having amazing interactive facilities which made the job of
>> communicating with them both a pleasure as well as a cooperative task
>> - had such high manual assembly costs.  ordinarily on USA-based
>> pricing for parts, or if the unit sale price was even 3x to 4x the
>> costs it would not have been a problem, but when the assembly cost is
>> nearly 80% to 100% of the component cost, _that_'s a problem.
>
> So, "onshoring" still has a way to go, then. ;-)

 yehhh if it was fully-automated then i'm certain they're wouldn't be
a huge difference, but with this being a split PCB design, *two* sets
of 80-100% markup for assembly costs and *two* sets of 350% increases
in anticipated PCB costs was just too much.  there was absolutely no
way i could meet the $95/$99 target sale price (which btw at qty 250
will still be barely profitable), i would have had to raise the price
to around $130, even possibly as high as $140.

>>  so it has been back to square one to find a china-based contract
>> manufacturer, and i just have to let them get on with it and get back
>> to me when they can.
>
> Oh dear! Well, as long as you can identify reliable and reputable
> manufacturers who can schedule the work.

 yes.  i know just the people - they're very very good at PCB
manufacturing, i just didn't realise until recently that they do
assembly as well.  doh!

l.