Consortium to build awesome laptop?

Yea..You are probably right

 

Shuttle launches push for notebook motherboard standards

Shuttle | Notebook Website

 

That's exciting, looks like they will also offer external graphics

 

Don't many HP docking stations have external graphics?
I've always wondered if that means theres some kind of PCI-E port on the docking connector.

Another thing I've wondered - probably going to ask nando4 in the vidock thread - but I wonder if theres a chance in heck of getting SLI to work between an MXM card and an external desktop card. It seems more possible than you'd think initially but modding a vbios to work would be very difficult...

 

working with shuttle and MXM upgrade we could come up with something worth it and viable and if we try to jum on the nanowire batterie befor other OEM we could even offer a viable competiton to launch a compagnie

how ever i wonder if shuttle's project include possibilitie for raid and cfx laptop

 

wel I'd be up for anyones help, the only problem is getting those people on board. It would incur a lot of cost.

 

if we can mount a viable project $ wise we could get people with the $ to actualy invest themselfs

 

I second that.

 

Then create a range. I don't think anyone would complain if we really built an alternative to the MBP range.

It would be great to get investors. That is sorta the point.

 

Well besides of above, I don't really see how you can improve much on already existing top-ends, from engineering standpoint. They all excel in some areas already, just can't be done excelling in all areas due to power/weight/thermal constraints. And don't forget the costs too, these can ramp up very quickly.

 

My boss/associate has been thinking of investing in some crazy ideas i've had, like building desktop graphics cards into laptops fully integrated.

He thinks of 90% of what I do as 'dinkin around' but its really funny how much he gets into the idea of long term profit and investing once I explain some of it from that standpoint.

He also told me that he has an idea himself that he cant tell me, and hes been working to get it off the ground.
I could certainly get him to invest in something like this, its all a matter of practicality.

Magnesium alloy is perfect. There is no heads or tails to that. Plastic is a way to seriously decrease manufacturing and design costs. There can be an entire company based around totally custom chassis for existing motherboards, but as someone was discussing earlier we could also base some SLI machines off of mini-ITX or embedded computing boards.

I think this is a very good legit idea as long as we have some way to keep progress at a steady rate.
Perhaps we should make a project page or website somewhere other than the forums...

 

-13.3" 1366x768 resolution
-4 GBs of RAM standard
-AMD Fusion
-256GB built-in SSD drive similar to what Apple is doing
-Aluminum body
-Full size chiclet keyboard
-3x USB, 1x ethernet, 1x HDMI, 1x expansion slot
-6-cell battery (good for around 8 hours realistic battery life)
-$1399

 

13.3" 1440x900
Magnesium alloy

But the rest I agree with.

 

With docking port that has an x16 PCI bus for an external graphics dock

 

1366x768 no panel of that resolution has any good qualitie the rest of the above makes sens for a starting point but it has noting to stand out of the market it's a preatty standar notebook with nothing special

 

Well for a ntoebook to stand out from the rest of the market it has to have something visible to the buyer. The screen is the obvious choice. That's not to say that it is the only thing. The other option is the overall build quality. Then there is the size, weight, battery life.

People continue to use WXGA because there isn't anything currently out there with the higher res screen. I'm sure now that the MBA has one, the industry is going to go nuts for it.

Theres no reason why we can't take some risks with it. After all at the moment it is very hypothetical. By keeping things like the cpu sensible, (something in the i3 range is fine) and RAM to 4 gigs, then we could potentially afford to have a little more freedom with things like screen real estate.

 

What properties/advantages does magnesium alloys have that makes it different from aluminum? Is it cheaper?

Design is extremely important, minimalism wins. The M11x would be 50x more popular if it didn't look ridiculous.

 

15.4" or 17'~ to make enough space for cooling a powerful GPU.

Magnesium alloy ftw.
Magnesium alloys are harder and more difficult to scratch. IIRC it doesn't flex anywhere near as much as aluminum.

It is cheaper then aluminum, and a better material for laptops... I personally would prefer a durable ABS Thermoplastic, and magnesium roll cage over a purely magnesium alloy case. Reasoning is a mix of tough, malleable material with a hard shell. This allows for the flex required during hits and the magnesium chassis to support it from bending.

 

minimalist is lame if i wanned a box i'd get a box and screw my lappy in it

i actualy like my allienware because it stand out of the crowd people even seem to fire that the thing is gonna bite them and alienware is way more popular then you seem to hink dell even had dificultie to fill the demand not so long ago

i also hate apple aproache to minimalistic it's almost as if they wanned to build a laptop that have a single button

honestly if it got the standardised diferent cases could be built so that one cane xchange the case just like any part

 

I think Alienware is more popular than Dell anticipated, but its still not that popular. One of the reasons is that they're butt ugly. I think there should be a 13,15, and 17 inch range of laptops. Increasing in power as the size increases.

I wouldn't be against a plastic + magnesium build, I'm thinking Lenovo X301-esque. As long as it felt decent quality. Theres no reason why a minimalist laptop can't stand out. I think the key is good, efficient design. Apples laptops have ended up minimalist, I don't think they initially set out to do so. They very much went for the utilitarian thing and made it beautiful. Everything you see has a purpose. When I buy a laptop I don't need to know what proessor it has it in, I bought it already. I don't need to know the brand of the speakers.

Of course I understand that a lot of the money that is used to build the laptop comes from such sponsorship so its a difficult line to tread. I wouldn't even begin to say we should copy Apple, we should, however, learn from the the top companies out there.

 

okey it confirm case must be standardised so thatw e have one that stand out one that is minimalistic without having to redesing all the laptop and contempting both worlds


i'm also a tech enthusiast and a gamer so maybe ou don,t need to know what parts are in your laptop but i do heck how do i know if it's gonna run on my machine so i prefer knowing what is in then living in the I world where i get sold thing without knowing what they are one of the goal of a such project is to go against compagnie that uses proprietary scrap and to prevent you from upgrading your hardware later on hell if we don't care about parts we don,t care about this project at all

 

I can aompletely understand your point. The problem with this is that we're going towards thinner and thinner laptops. Companies are always going to want to outdo one another when it comes to thin-ness. We all care about specs but we also care about portability.

 

well an other solution woudl be that we have several case that can accomodate diferenc cooling solution so if one wan a gaming laptop with agressive spec and looks he just pick the solution that matches it using interchangable part following the shuttle specification would simplifie as well as allowing many more configuration

and if one wan a minimalistic one with lessier feature power and heat he can build it to with pre selected build for those who don,t wanna go through the head heache od building a custon configuration

 

I'm double majoring in Architecture and Industrial Design next year so this thread is really interesting.

If I drew up some laptop designs, blueprints, and ideas, would you guys be interested?

 

Yes, pictures would make this thread more interesting

 

How unfortunate is this...

My scanner literally just broke this morning... my webcam is terrible. Sorry guys.

This took me a couple hours to draw but these are some rough sketches of an 12" computer I would absolutely love to have.

Some notes:

-As you can see from the first picture, the battery is big, but not overly gigantic. It's a lot easier to type on a computer that is not completely flat. There is a reason why a lot of desktop keyboards are slanted upward. I bet a high-capacity 6-cell could fit in a 12" with that size of a battery. I absolutely dislike those batteries that stick outward of the computer, it looks ugly and it makes the whole computer thicker. With this design, it looks sleeker, makes the keyboard better to type on, and it allows the computer to be raised so it cools better... I know HP made some laptops with a similar battery design, like this:



But they make the computer WAY too slanted.

-Full-sized chiclet keyboard, it looks bad in the picture due to webcam.

-Thinnest point: .98", Thickest point: 1.5"

-The trackpad, I moved the vertical scroller to the left for a reason. Whenever I am using the scroller on my computer, when it is on the right side my whole hand gets in the way. Also, you see the two big arrow buttons? When you tap the top one, it is page up, when you tap the bottom one, it is page down.

-The speakers are placed above the keyboard because I find that the best place to put speakers as they are pointed right towards your face.

Reasonable specifications:

Baseprice: $599
11.6" 1366x768 LED LCD
2 GBs soldered onto the board, 1 RAM expansion slot, (4 GBs, +$79, 6 GBs, +$129)
AMD Fusion "Zacate" E-240 (E-350 + $99)
128 GB SSD built-in (expandable to 256 GBs, +$199)
-HDMI, 3x USB, Ethernet, USB/Mic combo on left side, on the right side - SD Card slot
-Bluetooth, 802.11n wireless
-Full Magnesium Alloy
-3.0 pounds
-8 hours of realistic battery life

 

you left handed by any chance?

 

i'd cry if the scroll region would be on the left maybe an alternative would be to have the scroll to change side on demand

also i have to see a 1366x768 pannel that does not look crapy and with bad color replication so we need to get a better one at least as a option

 

Now that I think about it, yeah the scroller should be on the right side.

I know it's hard to see, but what do you guys think?

 

As long as the keys are tapered rather than flat/chiclet (which is hard to incorporate into a sketch) I think it looks great.

 

Yh I think it looks good. Do you have any CAD skills?

 

what do you mean by 2gb soldered onto the board?

as for the scroll bar i can by a software way mke it cover all my laptop or be almost not present at all would it be possible to by a such way make it change side^

 

Never have used CAD before...

What I mean as in 2 GBs soldered onto the board is that 2 GBs is soldered onto the logic board, only allowing 1 additional SO-DIMM to be added on.

This is quite common with cheap, budget, compact ultraportable laptops. Expandability comes with a price of being both slightly more expensive to manufacture and slightly more space needed to have expansion slots...

Besides, with the AMD Fusion platform, anything over 6 GBs wouldn't really make that much of a difference I wouldn't think.

 

I want an 13.3 inch G series laptop lol...anyone else want one of those heh...

I think planning out development would benefit this type of project the most. Set goals/deadlines things of that nature. Its not all about the product, its how you got there and what came of it. The laptop is just a peace of the picture.

 

also what revision of bluetooth would be implemented 2.1+EDR is the standar today but 3.0 offer much better bandwich and 4.0 power consumsion

 

There's a gazillion laptops on the market. You'd have to do something spectacularly different for it to be really noticed.

If you made a whitebook that was truly upgradeable and flexible that WOULD be something that would get a truly massive amount of free publicity.

13" is a good form factor but keep in mind it's pretty small and that limits things a lot, increases the need for precise engineering, and increases the cost of manufacture. 14" I think is a good combination of everything, but you'll never please everyone. The people who say netbooks are too small cannot be reconciled with the people who say 15"+ are too heavy, the thin'n'light crowd can't be reconciled with buyers who want pure grunt, low temps, or sturdy construction. You'll need to really research the market and figure out who you're going to target - or try and have options that target different groups (e.g. an option that adds reinforcement to the chassis by way of metal skeleton or something)

One thing not seen yet that would be brilliant IMO is a swappable/modular ports that connect to a common internal interface. That way there can be all the USB 3.0, Firewire, eSATA, maybe even external pcie 8x/16x port - whatever the user wants, they just buy the port module and plug it in.

Same with screen... 1366 up to 1920 options, give the cheap options but also have really high quality matte screens for those who scream for them!

Have an option for addon battery packs as well to get runtimes really high for those that want it (my 1st laptop from 1995 had a bay where either the CD drive, a floppy, or a 2nd battery could be put in)

By having a common base, you could keep cost down, but the upgradeability down the path will be the path where the buyer can keep upgrading their notebook to meet their needs down the track.

I know I'd consider it an awesome laptop if I knew there was all this reasonably-priced (NOT cheap) stuff I could add on to make it do extra stuff.

It would be a huge contrast to the current laptop market where basically you're stuck with what you buy, until it either breaks, or gets ditched for lasting so long it's unbearably slow.

Just a few ideas.

 

the main idea of the thread is to get there

how ever devloping straight a laptop with all interchangable part might be a little to costy for a start up consorsium

 

Sorry if my english isn't very good, I am rather tired from finals.

I really don't see this going anywhere until we get some people to invest some money and actual resources and time into developing such a thing, for now this is all just pure speculation.

My idea of a perfect laptop:

-One that has enough power for the basic user, can handle 720P Flash video fullscreen for example from Hulu, iTunes, web browsing, light gaming, etc. There is no need to upgrade to an unneeded processor just because it is "the latest and greatest" or looks good on paper so you can brag to your friends if it isn't truly going to benefit the user and is more expensive than other options.

-Good battery life - what is the point of a portable that gets 3 hours of battery life? It isn't very "portable" carrying an AC adapter around, is it?

-Solid construction, no going half assed on the keyboard and trackpad - a lot of people seem to believe that the interface in which we put into the computer, the way we interact with it, isn't as important as specs, but the truth is one of the main reasons Apple is so successful is because their keyboards, screens, and touchpads do not compromise. I have yet to see this in a Windows laptop. A lot of Windows PCs either use dinky touchpads, keyboards with a bunch of flex, or subpar screens. There might be a couple laptops with all three of these features, but I haven't seen one yet.

The way I see it, the perfect laptop is oriented like this:

35% Performance, 25% Battery Life, 15% Interface (Keyboard, trackpad, screen), 5% Heat management

Obviously Perfomance is the most important part of the computer - if it doesn't perform the task you want it to, then it is useless. But Battery Life is also extremely important, because the whole point of a laptop is to be portable - it is not portable if you carry an AC adapter around, extra batteries around, or are constantly looking for a wallplug.

Heat isn't as important as people seem to think. The only time it really makes sense to use a notebook on your lap is when you are on the bed, and usually then you have a blanket and/or pillow inbetween you and your laptop. A lot of people believe that because your laptop runs hotter, your laptop will not last as long. Again, this is untrue. There are many more things that factor in a lot more in how long a laptop lasts moreso than heat.

 

Careful with your language, it IS true.

I have been around hardware overclocking sites for a good 5 years now and have never come across someone who can back up this statement.

All things being equal, higher heat causes faster degradation of electronic circuits. It's laws of physics.

I do however agree that failure due to heat-degraded circuits is EXTREMELY RARE and often don't end up happening as much as they otherwise would because most laptops are either broken physically or abandoned through obsolescence.

 

TSE what makes you think that no one on this forum could have the funds to invest in a such project

only most here are enthusiast and thee original project was about having a laptop that you could swap even the motherboard out to upgrade even the cpu

most won`t be interested in a project about playin a 720p video (mine can play 3 1080p video simultaneously) on a laptop that has a potential life span of half a year and almost no upgreadability at all (heck even the ram is solered on that thing) and we where complaining about the mobo not being upgradable


failure du to heat beeing extremely rare ?? depends on who you are frequenting failure du to heat are quite rare for enthusiast or overcloker because this specific niche won't buy part at 20$ that will frie them self watching a youtube video and even more that specific niche won't put a pillow in the laptop air intake because it's to hot for thier lap and wonder why thier laptop keeps rebooting randoomly

 

I am afraid death due to high temperatures is very rare, and to be honest only happens with frequency in defective models like the Nvidia 6150 fiasco on the HP DV series, as well as the Nvidia 8*** series mess up across many manufacturers.

While yes heat CAN kill a machine, and it can kill it very quickly it requires very high temperatures. Most processors/gpu's can withhold over 80c. Depending on the processor the limit can be 80c-105C for processor. For dedicated graphics cards, around 100c+ before any damage starts to occur. For integrated graphics, it depends. I've pushed AMD's 4200 upwards to 80c+, Intels non-ii3/i5 ntegrated GPU with CPU I wouldn't push over 70c to be safe. The Intel i3/i5' on chip IGP should be capable of 90c with little to no damage.

Furthermore the real killer of computers are drastic heat changes. It is bad for any electrical component to be subjected to high temperatures, then quickly cool down to 30c-40c. For example, having your computer run at 80c for a few hours while gaming then while you stop gaming the temperature plummets downwards to 30c-40c this causes an issue with leakage and efficiency in electric circuitry.
Hard drives are probably the ones most affected by this, and they can and will die in relatively short time because of drastic temperature changes.

A processor will handle it however many others wont: Hard drives (As mentioned), motherboards, ram, fans, power supplies (internal only, desktops etc), DVD drives (rarely fail anyways but if it's bad enough they can die too, etc. Motherboards on laptops are notorious for having bad electrical components of low temperatures, they can die.


There is no such thing as the "right" laptop. TSE perhaps doesn't do anything but play around with his laptop, however there are some of us that watching 720p video is NOT enough, even by today's mass public standards it is not enough. The minority, us, need to be able to edit 1080p video. Red ONE video, edit 4k-8k rendered models, do CAD design, play games which require more power then they should, graph hundreds of thousands of statistics etc.

Battery life while it is important, it is not a threat to anything. A few hundred dollars can get you high density Lithium Ion batteries. Voila, long battery life.

 

This is my idea of the Ultimate Perfect Laptop!

I am a gamer/power user this laptop is set up for that type of user. I have had the idea for a long time, and even checked it out for a patent. (patents are not cheap! and the inventor websites that claim to help you are full of it!) Anyway on to the idea.

Aluminum or carbon fiber chassis
17 to 18.4 inch RGB LED screen, 3D if possible
Two to three HHD's
Back lit keyboard
e-sata, USB 3.0, HDMI-in 1.4a (ps3/xbox playable) and etc.
onboard sound card, optical audio out
Basically m17x is currently with extras

Now for the magic!
The track pad is replaced with a dock-able Smart phone (like a dell streak or iphone and when said phone is remove there will be a basic track pad) When docked the smart phone integrates with the laptop for more that just a color trackpad it provide internet, connects high speed syncing of media and other data.

Plus if your are not going to be gaming then you can restart your laptop and boot into the smart phone and watch movies, basic office apps, and anything else that a smart phone can do! The screen will only be the only thing using the battery! This will give great battery life when you need it.
Something that is unheard of with gaming laptops.

Also, I have a touch screen laptop which I play around with using drawing programs. I think (being a little over the top) having the same idea as above but adding in or instead. Putting a ipad or Samsung Tab on the lid of the laptop able to be connected even when undocked so the GPU's still can render the images. Also possible, making a swinging henge to give a second screen when using the laptop.(As long as it doesn't look cheap)

Also,
32 GB+ hard wired on the Mother board for the OS/'s

Warning rant:
Why is this not a standard for all motherboards? I'm not talking about ram. Every OS needs about 16 to 32 GB of space. the whole SSD thing is about speed and battery life. But they cost a lot for the 100+ sizes. But the small sizes are cheap. Just hard wire the small ones on the motherboards. Mech HHD for your data and your good! If you want or need everything high speed then let your bank account then do the talking.

Let me know what you think!!!

 

there are some 32GB mini pcie SSD sadly the way it's now most laptop can't use them


but the best way to satisfie every one is to go all modular why shuttle and MXM could be our friends
if there is no restriction to what GPU or W/E can be put in imagine you buy today a 17" laptop with an amd cpu and CFX capacitie and 2 sick GPU in january intel launche Sandy bridge wan the lastes thing well go a head buy the new mobo+CPU and Voila

if the theoretical consortium sell parts for it's laptop eventualy the market would evolve in a part market where people buy what they need such a system would also fidelise client as they are not forced to buy the whole thing to upgrade

 

IMHO,

If the people on this forum are really want to make anything. They would have to set up a leadership team, open a LLC business, next setup a P2P lending account for funding of that business. Figure out how to design a laptop/s without the design being stolen by the bigger company's, so investester don't lose there money. Then manufacture enough units to turn a profit or at lease break even, before tech is out dated.

Good lucky with that...

But if I can help some how let me know.

 

I'm not a hardware designer, but lately I have been wonder if the GPU company are hosing us. I mean everyone here knows the High-end GPU's laptop use are in fact the low end Desktop GPU's. So I wonder if you take a itx setup cram it into a laptop and then plug a desktop GPU on the back like a laptop battery. (use your imagination)

Would it work? I mean stay cool and deliver.

I know, I know, thats not a laptop its a mobile desktop, but you have to start somewhere.

 

Yes it is doable however the "thinnest" I have see a laptop made with desktop GPU/CPU was a 3" thick workstation, this doesn't include the LCD assembly thickness. It was a custom DIY project that cost the person a lot of money and time due to the parts cost. Temperatures were kept in safe ranges, however were higher then a desktop.
Did I mention it weighed around 13 pounds? (or was it kg... I forget). It was far from what I'd consider mobile.

Honestly the cooling is there, the only issue it is heavy, and it is thick.

Edit: IMO This project needs to get going, quickly.

 

Yes, I have seen a few on the web also. But I'm thinking like the same size as an alienware or sager. And if possible, new video card comes out just pop out the old GPU and pop in the new one. just like on your desktop. Just think of it like your laptop battery.

 

I would be glad to draft up some designs if you guys tell me what you want.

I know for a fact most people dislike huge clonking laptops even if it means it is faster... The best selling laptops are 15" laptops - they are the most mainstream.

I'm not saying this project is impossible, in fact, it is very possible. But what until something comes into fruition, we need to have a set goal on what kind of laptop we want, whose doing what, etc.

The majority of people wouldn't notice the difference between a Core 2 Duo and a Core i5. Most people want just the basics. As notebook enthusiasts we know more than the average consumer...

What I'm just not seeing is the point of having a user-replaceable motherboard and CPU. It just isn't cost effective AT ALL. It's a lot more cost effective to just buy a totally new laptop than get a new limited produced motherboard, cpu, whatever.

Maybe I'm just not seeing it.

We all have different ideas of what we want in a laptop. My perfect laptop is a 13" with a solid keyboard and trackpad, no optical drive, super thin, great battery life, and great performance to run some 1080P Flash videos fullscreen, light gaming (the new Deus Ex looks awesome), and no compromising on quality. I would pay $2500 for a machine like this... The Sony Z is too flimsy and breakable for my tastes and doesn't provide enough battery life.

Other people consider gigantic 18" laptops with dual graphics cards and 45 minutes of battery life to be the perfect laptop.

Other people consider $400 15" laptops with no graphics cards, flimsy construction, and terrible keyboards to be the perfect laptop.

You guys get what I'm saying?

 

Wow, you guys have been busy since I last came here.

As stated before there is always going to be discrepancy between what people view as being the "perfect" laptop as we would all want it for slightly different things.

So perhaps we need to remain objective. We need to set out who is our target audience. For instance, is there a gap in the market for a gaming machine. I'm not sure what else a gaming machine would need apart from whats already out there.

There is a section of the PC market that is dominated by really cheapo plasticy nonsense. I think this may be a place to start. But I do think proper market research needs to be carried out.

 

I was looking at at the CR-48 and I think this would be a good system to follow. The google system is lacking somewhat in that people won't want to buy an underpowered machine for more than the average system. It doesn't make any sense.

So I was thinking that if we could get some CAD drawings of a system similar to that but for the another user we could put that out to the internets to see if anyone will take it on. Stranger things have happened...