- Monday, 23 November 2009
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Don't put an idea into Henry VIII's head. It's hard to get it out - Thomas Cromwell
Via laptop goes Open Source
BUILDING YOUR OWN computer has gone beyond nailing a few off-the-shelf components together and overclocking the RAM, with the announcement that Via will be offering CAD files of its Openbook laptop to anyone who's interested.
The design drawings are offered for download under a Creative Common Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license, but you'll probably need to hire a few engineering Phds and come up with a couple of million quid in development capital to make it all work out.
If you do decide to open a fab in your garden shed, your new plant will be churning out laptops powered by the C7-M ULV processor and the VX800 IGP chipset. It'll be a small, 1kg, 8.9" mini-notebook design that supports screen resolutions of up to 1024x600 and DirectX 9.0 3D graphics. Video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DiVX video formats, a VMR capable HD video processor and 8-channel HD audio are also included.
The mini-note reference design offers broadband connectivity though two internal modules, one featuring WiFi, Bluetooth, and optional AGPS connections and the second one offering a choice of WiMAX, HSDPA, or EV-DO/W-CDMA.
It also comes with three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, and audio-in/audio-out jacks as well as a 4-in-1 card reader (SD/SDIO/MMC/MS) and a 2 mega-pixel dual-headed web camera.
The design supports a wide range of operating system environments, including Vista Basic, Windows XP, and various Linux distributions. The device features up to 2GB DDR2 DRAM and can be equipped with a choice of hard disk drive and solid state storage options.
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To be fair, once the dimensions of all the components are available, it will not take long for even a small company to start making the laptop-shells. They might not assemble everything, but once the shells start showing up, I'm sure other companies will jump at the opportunity to make their own laptops.
Does the laptop still use a prorpitary, closed source bios, or is Via releasing that as well?
Where is my Isaiah? I've been waiting for a few months to get my hands on a UMPC with an Isaiah processor in it. I would think if Via is launching a new open laptop design they would use the press coverage to plug their soon (maybe?) to be release new processor. Should I not be holding my breathe waiting for the release?
they dont opensource the whole laptop, just the exterior design, they allow you just to be able to make new faceplates for the thing... (and then shove em up wherever you can, cause they arent building em unless the design is just freaking awesome and you dont ask a dime for your effort) so not that revolutionary... not that do it in your backyard suff... you would need lots of money to get the machinerry to make the faceplates and buy their components and place it on stores arround the world....
Something for nvidia, abit and gigabyte?