[HH] Almost Completely Open Source Laptop

[Kurt L Keville]

Wow... your Google Alerts must be working overtime. This was only announced
today at EELive! Bunnie Huang is held is considerable reverence at MIT for
being one of the early guys to reverse engineer game consoles. IIRC his first
O'Reilly book got recalled as part of a MS lawsuit and then re-released with
some redactions. Apparently you can now get the original e-book from his
website...

Quoting Tom Metro <tmetro+hhacking at gmail.com>:

> The Almost Completely Open Source Laptop Goes on Sale
> http://mprod.wired.com/2014/04/novena/
>
>  Earlier this year, the two Singapore-based engineers fashioned a
>  laptop made almost entirely from open source hardware, hardware whose
>  designs are freely available to the world at large. They called it
>  Project Novena. Anyone could review the designs, looking for bugs and
>  security flaws, and at least in theory, that meant you could be
>  confident the machine was secure from top to bottom, something that's
>  more desirable than ever in the post-Edward Snowden age.
>  ...
>  Starting today, you can order your own pre-built Novena laptop through
>  the crowd-funding site Crowd Supply, and it will ship out in the
>  coming months.
>  ...
>  The project is part of larger movement towards open source hardware.
>  ... If you share designs, others can make them better. The new,
>  commercial version of the Novena does include some parts that are
>  closed source, such as the processor, but Huang and Cross have tried
>  to minimize these as much as possible.
>  ...
>  ...designed so that you can readily expand the hardware that's inside.
>  "Half of it is empty," Huang says of the machine. "It's designed with
>  the thought that you would add to it yourself."
>  ...
>  You can purchase a version of the machine, including the aluminum
>  case, high-definition display, and motherboard for $1,195. For $1,995,
>  you also get a battery and a 240 gigabyte solid-state hard drive.
>  ...
>  You can also buy just the motherboard for $500 and use it with your
>  own case.
>  ...
>  All versions of the Novena run the open source Linux operating
>  systems, and they're powered by an ARM processor... Yes, these
>  machines are a bit underpowered by today's standards, and they're even
>  more expensive than a premium laptop...
>
>
> It's less of a laptop and more of a portable:
>
>  The aluminum version of the machine is unusual in that the display
>  sits on the outside of the case. When you lift the case lid, you see
>  not a keyboard but the insides of the machine. That makes it easy to
>  add new components. You then attach your own external keyboard, as you
>  would with an iPad or some other tablet PC.
>
> See the photo, but basically it is a "pizza box" configuration, where
> the display makes up the lid. You open the box and prop the display at
> the desired angle with an easel stand. Exposed in the base of the box is
> the motherboard. I guess it is up to you to tote around a keyboard
> separately.
>
>
> The pitch is that this is open design for improved security, "...it's
> open source, for people who care about the security, privacy." But the
> article doesn't explore any of the specific of how they accomplished
> that, such as all the usual proprietary binary blobs that would need to
> be replaced.
>
>
>  Lifton also emphasizes that if you purchase one of these laptops, you
>  shouldn't think of yourself as an investor in company. You're simply
>  getting a laptop at a lower price than others will in the future.
>
> As crowd funders of the Oculus Rift recently were reminded, when the
> company cashed out to a Facebook acquisition, and the original
> supporters were left out of the windfall.
>
> The SEC has changed some of its investment rules to potentially
> accommodate taking an equity stake in a business through crowd funding.
> I wonder when we'll see sites designed to facilitate that, instead of
> these pre-sales online stores.
>
> -Tom
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