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Great initiative, but the proprietary expansion cards are entirely counter-productive to maintainability. The expansion cards will only be available for as lon
by gillesjacobs 6y ago
Great initiative, but the proprietary expansion cards are entirely counter-productive to maintainability.
The expansion cards will only be available for as long as your company provides them. Using the most-commonly used, mass-manufactured standard interfaces for components would provide more long-term repairability and upgradeability.
The trade-off would be in design resulting in more bulk and in the economics of your company, of course. It seems cynical to me to sell maintainability while starting a walled-garden ecosystem of proprietary hardware.
- kieranl 6y agoWe will open up the expansion card spec and share reference designs to enable partners and the community to build their own! I want it to be open as much as you do.
- ryandrake 6y agoThis is a great first step. Ideally the expansion story converges on some kind of industry-wide standard, like PCMCIA was. Would be cool to have other peripheral manufacturers out there agreeing on the spec and committed to building expansion hardware!
- colonwqbang 6y agoIs it "just" an internal USB-C connection to the expansion card? Or is there something else going on that could be more difficult to work with?
- kieranl 6y agoNothing that goes outside the usb/displayport standards. We have to be compatible to support the passthrough card :).
- ehnto 6y agoIs there a catching/locking mechanism for the expansion module that holds it in place? It would be a shame if the whole module came out when trying to remove a particularly firm USB connector.
- opsy2 6y agoYes (source: another comment that described it. lock & button to remove. hot swapping supported)
- gillesjacobs 6y agoSounds like a good solution to me, I hope you succeed, I surely will keep an eye on the project! I assumed it wouldn't be an open design because the marketing didn't mention it. I would integrate this message in your marketing because it's worth convincing critical audiences.
- gregmac 6y agoIn the worst case (they change the interface spec and no one else produces old modules, or the company folds entirely) it's not any less maintainable than any other laptop on the market today. I think most laptops still allow storage and battery upgrades/replacement; RAM is questionable (some being soldered on the motherboard); and anything else basically means replacing the whole device.
- colonwqbang 6y agoIt looks like the expansion cards are just USB-C adapters that fit inside the case. If so, it should be pretty simple to make a compatible expansion card. Or just plug in any dongle you like, ignoring the form factor.