(( Logo goes here 
))
custom notebook computers
Have you ever wanted to design your own custom notebook? What sort of things have you always wished for on a laptop? Please add them to this list.
See NoteBook for standard off-the-shelf notebook computers.
Many people like their laptop, except for one little thing.
Since desktop computers have fairly standardized interfaces, it’s fairly easy for people to fix “one little thing” by swapping out one component.
There are a few things that can be swapped out on a typical laptop – upgrade the memory, upgrade the hard drive, plug in different “PC Cards”, plug in a different set of headphones, and a couple other things.
But as of 2007, the only way to fix most “one little thing"s on a notebook is to sell off the old notebook and buy an entirely different notebook – one that may have fixed that “one little thing”, but has its own little quirks.
Some things that currently don’t seem to be available on any off-the-shelf notebook computer:
- “I want 2 hard drives in the laptop, so I can run RAID1 mirroring.” – David. Have you looked at "Install a RAID on your MacBook Pro" "RAID ... in a Macbook Pro" ?
- “I want my laptop to use standard off-the-shelf batteries I can buy at any grocery store – perhaps an array of AA batteries.” – Paul
- computers suitable for “wearable computing”
- external SATA connector “eSATA” (wikipedia:eSATA)
- “internal” USB connector “pocket” – deep enough that an entire USB keydrive or wireless mouse reciever goes all the way inside and plugs into the USB connector at the bottom (rather than “sticking out” awkwardly).
- digital video out (DVI or HDMI)
- can run off 12 V with a standardized (?) power plug (so I can use a simple cable between my car’s power port and the laptop, rather than use a 12 VDC to 120 VAC inverter followed by a 120 VAC to 20 VDC power adapter)
- no keyboard at all, only a PS/2 or USB socket to plug in any kind of keyboard.
- watertight hard drive ( to avoid "the data contained was lost forever" stories ). Or perhaps go a step further and make the entire laptop watertight? See instructables: "A Computer you can use in the Shower"
- "tiny jet engines" that use a fuel with over 10 times the energy density of the best batteries. [1]; [2]; [3].
Other things that are cool, and some off-the-shelf computers have them, but apparently no computer has all of them (yet):
- solid-state “hard drive” (SSD)
- option of putting a second battery instead of the optical drive into the optical drive bay
- Firewire connectors that supply enough power to run a firewire camera (“6 pin”)
- built-in camera, microphone, and speakers
- USB connector(s) on both the left and right sides
- "A Periscope for My Macbook"
- “Want to type underwater? Control your music without opening your laptop? … We're taking the strongest and most popular ideas and creating the first community-designed laptop” via "Dreaming a Deep-Sea PC" Is that so? I thought this page on the Computer Component wiki was first.
- "a laptop with dual dvi heads"
- Do any laptops support ECC memory? one forum post claims that one such laptop exists. I buy PCs with SECDED.
- water-resistant laptop
further reading
Some relatively primitive notebook that are far more customizable (and have much longer battery life) than typical off-the-shelf notebook computers:
- "DIY Laptop v1" and "DIY Laptop v2" by Chris Fenton: extremely low-cost and extremely easy to customize. Version 1 had just barely enough RAM and storage to produce a “self-hosted development platform.” (text editor, compiler, interpreter): Picaxe-18X microcontroller, 20×4 character LCD screen, external 24LC512 EEPROM, and a tiny PS/2 keyboard. Version 2 upgraded to 16 KB of “RAM” (FRAM chips), 256 KB of “storage” (EEPROM chips), 2-way symmetric multiprocessing Picaxe 28X-1 CPUs, sound, 24 x 8 character LCD, 4 AAA batteries. Completely open-source software: “ChrisFS? file system”, “Linaxe” OS command-line interface, “EMX” the EMAXE text editor, “CC” the Chris# Compiler, PONG, HELP, “CHRIS#” (improved version of “Chris++”) a primitive BASIC interpreter written in Picaxe BASIC, etc.
Places that talk about customizing the outer case and heavily hacking some standard desktop or video game console to fit inside it so it looks vaguely like a laptop: (most of these have no batteries, and must be connected to mains power to run)
Places that just talk about customizing the outer case (and putting some standard PDA or laptop guts inside):
- "Make a PDA Notebook": “a PDA powered “laptop” with keyboard” – Kip Kay
- DIY Palm Pilot notebook: (also mentioned at "Iron Gadget: Palm Foleo vs. DIY Palm Pilot notebook")
- RepRap: laptop case
- the Poor Man's (not so rapid) Prototyping Method for the Fabber-less, aka “the Origami Prototyping Method”, as used to “create a custom case for my tablet pc.”
- Instructables: "A Computer you can use in the Shower" explains how to completely waterproof a laptop computer.
Open source laptop hardware reference designs:
- "Qi's mission is to promote and encourage the development of copyleft hardware."
- VIA OpenBook: “The computer-aided design (CAD) files for the OpenBook? reference design can be downloaded for free and made available to anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike? 3.0 license.”
- Via NanoBook reference design (is this open source?)
Other notebooks that are less customizable than the above:
- the OpenBook project is an open source hardware and software project designing a computer tablet … Everyone can contribute and help to shape the OpenBook? hardware and software specifications on the OpenBook? Project website. See the Openbook wiki (http://obook.info/)
- How to test a notebook computer? Does TestTheHardware already include those tests?
- wikibooks: build a laptop has a few tips on a semi-custom notebook computer (but it doesn’t have enough flexibility for most of the above items).
- Wiki:ComputingHardwareWishlist – has many wishes, some of them might be nice in a notebook computer.
- If you are one of the people complaining about every laptop having slightly different, incompatible battery form-factor from every other laptop, you might want to support "IEEE working on new laptop battery standards".
- "Tech Fusion Outline: Organising the World's Knowledge." by lkcl has a huge pile of ideas for better computer hardware (and software)
- Instructables: "I am wondering if there is a guide to making a backpack laptop. Similar to the one shown in "Live Free Die Hard"?"
- OCZ Technology DIY notebooks via Wikipedia: Barebook: but does it support RAID?
- OCZ DIY Gaming Notebook 15": a barebones laptop that lets you select and install the CPU, RAM, and hard disk.
- Homebrew Wearable PS/2 Keyboard
- Slashdot: "A Cheap and Portable Word Processor?"
- Tom's Hardware: "Building Your Dream Notebook "
- "DIY Laptop/ Notebook Computer - Do It Yourself Notebook, Picture Tutorial" by Dr. Michael 2005 … the same site has some barebones notebooks listed at "DIY: Do-it-Yourself Laptops"