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This article does leave me slightly confused. Both these additions seem to be completely done after the fact. Why would you solder wires to 1 side of the pads f

by leoedin 11y ago

This article does leave me slightly confused. Both these additions seem to be completely done after the fact. Why would you solder wires to 1 side of the pads for the pulldown resistors (suggesting that when the motherboard was designed it was intended to always have enabled WiFi) rather than designing a proper switch (not very many components!) into the board to start with? It all sort of suggests that they didn't actually design their motherboard at all, or that these switches were an afterthought. Neither of those is particularly good given their claims. It probably costs a lot more than $250,000 to develop a laptop from scratch, so I wouldn't blame them for taking a higher level systems approach and buying in a pre-existing motherboard design. However, doing that inevitably gives up control of the design (which puts into doubt their claims of being completely open). If that's the approach they've taken, they're not particularly open about it.

Pxtl 11y ago
Yes, with this workflow it sounds like they're selling an off-the-shelf laptop with some hand-done hacks and replacement software.
robryk 11y ago
> It probably costs a lot more than $250,000 to develop a laptop from scratch (...) Novena[1] had a total budget of ~750k$. It was done from scratch, with some nonstandard (and somewhat expensive) components (e.g. an fpga; it had a software defined radio included too, though it was a mostly-off-the-shelf-one). [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena
- leoedin 11y ago
  Novena's a pretty amazing project, but it's not nearly as polished as this purism laptop appears to be. It's (intentionally) a hacker friendly box with lots of space and less integration than a normal laptop. It even uses a RC hobbyist style battery. Novena is a labour of love driven by a particularly skilled person. To design and mass produce a laptop as slim and well integrated as the Purism laptop is significantly more work. To do so having never produced a laptop before would cost even more so. $250,000 really is a small amount of money when you're trying to mass produce cutting edge consumer electronics. Of course they may (almost certainly do) have other sources of investment.

by leoedin 11y ago

Pxtl 11y ago

Yes, with this workflow it sounds like they're selling an off-the-shelf laptop with some hand-done hacks and replacement software.

robryk 11y ago

> It probably costs a lot more than $250,000 to develop a laptop from scratch (...) Novena[1] had a total budget of ~750k$. It was done from scratch, with some nonstandard (and somewhat expensive) components (e.g. an fpga; it had a software defined radio included too, though it was a mostly-off-the-shelf-one). [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

leoedin 11y ago
Novena's a pretty amazing project, but it's not nearly as polished as this purism laptop appears to be. It's (intentionally) a hacker friendly box with lots of space and less integration than a normal laptop. It even uses a RC hobbyist style battery. Novena is a labour of love driven by a particularly skilled person. To design and mass produce a laptop as slim and well integrated as the Purism laptop is significantly more work. To do so having never produced a laptop before would cost even more so. $250,000 really is a small amount of money when you're trying to mass produce cutting edge consumer electronics. Of course they may (almost certainly do) have other sources of investment.