I second this approach. Instead of building a laptop from scratch, try rebuilding existing laptops. Start with minor upgrades and repairs. Work your way towards

I second this approach. Instead of building a laptop from scratch, try rebuilding existing laptops. Start with minor upgrades and repairs. Work your way towards major ones, and eventually do a complete tear-down and rebuild. I suspect this is the way car mechanics learn. There are some further similarities. Like cars, and unlike desktop computers, laptops are heavily constrained by portable form factor concerns (size, thinness, total weight, efficient and safe cooling, low power usage, ruggedness). This wider variety of problems leads to a wider variety of solutions. So like cars, the guts of a laptop can differ wildly, and for learning you're best off picking a "line" that's well-engineered and has been relatively stable over time. I've been slowly working towards laptop building via re-building existing laptops. Specifically, old IBM T4x Thinkpads, which you can pick up for about $200 these days [1]. There's a wealth of information about how to take them apart and mess with things [2], the user disassembly manuals are excellent [3], and I believe even the more recent T2xx Lenovo line is still pretty similar in terms of components and how they all fit together. [1] http://www.iobound.net/laptop-prices/ http://www.iobound.net/laptop-prices/ [2] http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki [3] http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/39t6192_01.pdf http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/3...