Building my own laptop

[Hdier]

Hey, I have been thinking about building my own laptop, and I was wondering what you all think about building laptops. Has anyone ever done this?

[1OFMANY]

It sucks honestly, the only advantage is that you arent forced into that Vista fiasco.
If you want to do it for 50% product and 50% a hobby then its worth it. Just stick with a Core 2 Duo IMO. twice the battery life than any other CPu out there.

[The Rose]

Hey, I have been thinking about building my own laptop, and I was wondering what you all think about building laptops. Has anyone ever done this?Wow! Very cool! Good luck!

The most I've done is changed out hardware or RAM. Once I installed a modem.

[Vortex]

Its not practical. You can buy some bare bone laptops, but actually building one like you can build IHV-based desktops? No.

Your problem stems that the motherboard, case, and display are usually all integrated to each other and very specific in matching. Drivers aren't standard by any measure and will be a PITA to track down. Keyboard for the case is also quite model specific and may be difficult to acquire.

Besides those difficulties, the rest is straightforward. Just buy the IHV components you like and stick them all together. But at the end of the day, acquiring all those components is a huge ordeal and is simply near-impractical.

I'd recommend buying a barebones laptop or sub-model laptop with the core features (case, display, motherboard, battery, keyboard) that your after, and then replacing or adding other parts as required. It won't be as "clean" as a build as a straight grounds-up build, but its your only truly practical choice.

1OFMANY - its trivially easy to strip off the OS and go with XP, linux, even Mac OSX. Your only potential problem is drivers, but that wont be a problem on XP - linux, far more so. Also, while C2D is an amazing processor, its simply erroneous to claim it gets double your battery life. Total battery life will be very system-specific, and there are many processors out there that can go below the mininum voltage of a C2D if your looking for absolute maximum battery life.

[bucolic_]

Like vortex said, laptops are often built from proprietary parts. It won't really be worth your time in my opinion. Desktops are another story of course. I built my desktop, and bought my laptop, and will continue this in the future.

[Hdier]

So, a barebone is basically the casing (including screen, touchpad, etc.), the mother board and the battery? But everything else, like the graphics card and hard drive I'd install myself?

Well, if that is the case, then that sounds all right. Half the reason that I want to do this is simply so that it can be more 'mine' that one that I buy from the store. The other half is because I actually want a laptop (that isn't provided by my school), so this seems like a good compromise.

[1OFMANY]

1OFMANY - its trivially easy to strip off the OS and go with XP, linux, even Mac OSX. Your only potential problem is drivers, but that wont be a problem on XP - linux, far more so. Also, while C2D is an amazing processor, its simply erroneous to claim it gets double your battery life. Total battery life will be very system-specific, and there are many processors out there that can go below the mininum voltage of a C2D if your looking for absolute maximum battery life.

True, I was thinking mainly of the older Pentiums that were like nuclear frikkin reactors.

The barebone way is probly the best suggestion. Intel tried to standardize it again but it still didnt take off. There are still some floating around and some people are still into it ( reseller wise) google VBI and see if anyone near you sells Verified By Intel barebone stuff. Basically it means our tech support will fix your shit for the warranty period ends. But the program didnt last so its almost completely gone. Now I believe its called Common Building Blocks or some shi t like that.

[AgentofGaming]

I'm not sure building your own laptop is a good idea.
-Laptop parts are customized by large computer building firms (non-standard parts)
-Parts need to be smaller and they are more expensive and overheat easier
-> Larger prices buying your customized and non-standard parts and building your own on low volume will be very expensive. Not to mention, that the parts might not match and the chance of overheating are high.

[King K]

I agree with most of you, building a laptop could be a real pain because many parts are not standardized, and chances are that they simply won't match, you may get a barebone laptop then add RAM, etc, or simply mod a laptop.

[burazekun]

There is a standardization in laptops. Though individualized companies make exceptions to this by adding hardware that can only be bought or replaced through them. 'Like CPU heatsincs.'

If you are looking for a barebones, which is the only logical way to accomplish this feat you are asking for. Look at the companies MSI or ASUS. As they make the best barebones you can buy, however finding a barebones on a standardized market is hard, and the best bet is too look at wholesale ware houses or companies.

However I will offer the same advice I would to anyone. Get a Toshiba, Sony, or even an Acer, or Dell. They are great laptops, however the only building you will be doing is the online customization which may leave you a bit disapointed because you wanted to build one yourself.

[simoncpu]

Hdier,

Building your own laptop is impractical, IMHO. You might however, want to check out building your own small form factor computer using single-board computers (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

I'm sure you can find a portable monitor to go with it. If you have lots of bukos (coconuts, as I live in a tropical paradise called Philippines hehe), you might want to checkout Head-mounted displays (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).


Rock on

[fortyseventh]

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[simoncpu]

Whoa... that is cool. The casing is a bit uh... ugly though... I think I'd go make my own laptop and use a guitar (or coffee mug?) as my laptop case... hehehe

[fortyseventh]

I have taken apart a lot of laptops and what I've seen is that they make use of almost all the space inside the case. What this means is the case, battery, motherboard and the heat sink are custom built, it would be impossible to take the motherboard from lets say an Inspiron 600m and put it in an Inspiron 1405.

I believe to build a laptop from scratch one needs to get a motherboard that was build for a specific case (that would make it a barebone To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. ).

If there was some sort of form factor specification (like ATX) and manufacturers made motherboards, cases and batteries as per the specification then it would be possible to build laptops (that looked decent) from scratch.

[Geek007]

I was reading recently about someone who built a laptop in a hard shell bag/case with a small lcd monitor.