Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop
Some interesting choices, some incredibly disappointing.A9 core rather than the virtualization-ready A15? (I'd rather have a 64-bit ARM but those are still a ways out)Edit: and let's not hear about how closed A15 is blah blah. At the end of the day, something is closed. Did Freescale give you silicon masks? Guess it's not totally open after all.Single SO-DIMM means max 8GB of RAM, but of course since you're running a 32-bit chip you'll be restricted past 4GB anyway.100 Mbit Ethernet in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand Fourteen? Edit: Several people have pointed out that, thankfully, the 100Mbit port is a secondary port, while the main one is Gbit. This is actually pretty cool.The case is actually kind of cool, but you can't really call it a laptop if your footprint is normal laptop size + a separate keyboard. Nobody's lap is that big. I think it could be pretty usable for work while on travel but you can't use it on an airplane tray table.And then the pricing. Oh my the pricing. $700 for a case and a screen. Another $700 for an RC car battery and an SSD. Not even Apple marks up SSDs and batteries that much.I would really love to get the laptop spec one for $800-1000--you know, the price of a great desktop PC plus a monitor. Sure, the ARM processor is going to be disappointingly sluggish and I'll be beating my head against the 4GB memory ceiling within an hour, but it looks really damn cool and the screen size is acceptable.Kickstarter-type things are often done as "backers pay more for a unit, but they get it first and they're willing to pay because they believe in the product". However, the prices will go UP by 10% after this campaign is over! So the $2000 "laptop" will now cost $2200, despite the reduction in component cost due to time and scaling.Edit: oh, and apparently the case, which I think is one of the cooler parts of this project, doesn't seem to be open? So I can't pay a fabricator $200 to make one, then slap a $400 A15 board in there. The totally open laptop, ladies and gentlemen!