Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

bunniestudios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#11

Post by sliverstorm »

georgemcbay wrote: post #7

Having worked with bunnie and xobs at chumby, one thing I can vouch for is that they intimately understand the risks and challenges of actual real-world hardware production at scale. The fact that they went ahead with the crowdfunding on this is a really good indication that it will actually ship (if the goals are hit), and with a much higher probability of being on time than your average Kickstarter hardware project…

He's also been kicking the project around for years now, so he's probably thought/worked through a lot of the initial hurdles.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#12

Post by wicket »

I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available:

Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD.

All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-top LCD doesn't make a lot of sense - you lose a lot of desk space and the board is going to collect dust. It's not very portable due to the lack of a battery, controller board, keyboard and mouse so I might as well just plug it into my monitor.

Laptop: $800 more than the desktop option for a battery, controller board and SSD. Seems a little expensive and again still not very portable. I'm not sure you can call it a laptop without a keyboard or pointing device.

Heirloom Laptop: $3000 more than the "Laptop" for what is now actually a laptop that includes a keyboard and pointing stick with a wooden case. Wood is quite heavy so it's not exactly the ideal material for a portable device.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#13

Post by tmp1298371 »

At 2:15 in the video, the screen behind his head flashes a loop of the string "Y3Jvd2RzdXBwbHkuY29tL25vdmVuYS1wdXp6bGU=". When run through a Base64 decoder, it outputs "crowdsupply.com/novena-puzzle". It would appear as though we've got an ARG on our hands.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#14

Post by badataccounting »

Great idea really I wish them success!! but why are they using the keyboard from a Thinkpad.They are the most infuriating keyboards ever as the fn key is on the bottom left side with Ctrl one key in one. Even Lenovo's come with a switch in the BIOS to undo this. Before anyone says this is the actual format of the qwerty keyboard the overwhelming majority of people are used to it with Ctrl on the bottom left so just leave it

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#15

Post by mmastrac »

wicket wrote: post #12

I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available: Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD. All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-to…

My guess is that he's sourced an incredibly cheap batch of 4GB cards from China. It likely adds very little in terms of cost, but gives much more value to the end-user in being able to just boot it up and have it work.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#16

Post by mitosis »

badataccounting wrote: post #14

Great idea really I wish them success!! but why are they using the keyboard from a Thinkpad.They are the most infuriating keyboards ever as the fn key is on the bottom left side with Ctrl one key in one. Even Lenovo's come with a switch in the BIOS to undo this. Before anyone says this is the actual format of the qwerty keyboard the overwhelming majority of people are used to it with Ctrl on the bottom left so just l…

I'm not so sure the majority of developers / hackers (the target market for this device) are used to Ctrl on the bottom left. I know several (myself included) who remap their keyboard so it sits left of "A".

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#17

Post by tga_d »

wicket wrote: post #12

I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available: Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD. All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-to…

The first thing you’ll notice about the design is that the screen opens “the wrong way”. This feature allows the computer to be usable as a wall-hanging unit when the screen is closed. It also solves a major problem I had with the original clamshell prototype – it was a real pain to access the hardware for hacking, as it’s blocked by the keyboard mounting plate.

The point of the thing is to be easily modified, and the design facilitates that. If you don't want regular access to the components, you can leave it closed and treat it as more of a conventional all-in-one.

Re: Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop

#19

Post by tracker1 »

wicket wrote: post #12

I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices that are available: Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a 4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an SSD. All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the flip-to…

If you wanted just the board + case, and aren't really interested in hacking on the device, you might want to look into the Cubox-i4pro which uses the same cpu (though slightly slower clock, 1000 vs 1200 iirc)

https://imx.solid-run.com/product/cubox-i4-pro/

I just got my pre order a few weeks back, but haven't had the chance to play with it yet.

Post reply on HN