Would you biuld this?

[vsreeser]

Could be fun, or a learning experience. most likely both

BYO DIY Laptop

[claydoh]

No, not really. I'd take an ebay find, and take that apart, and build it up, upgrading and replacing pieces as I went, and end up with a speedy, useable laptop. However, as it is an arm SoC, one would have to learn about booting, flashing, and more as it is not going to be a simple pop-in-a-usb-stick-and-boot-into-the-installer affair. That can be fun. If this thing is dirt cheap, that of course changes things.

[GreyGeek]

No. A pure Geek project in a time when DYI geeks are becoming a rarity. Too rare to support a mass market.

That $5 CPU is a Cortex-A53 with four core and a max speed of 800MHz. Designed for smartphones, wifi's and TV top boxes, it wouldn't, IMO, make for a good client or server PC. I'd rather build a PI 2.

When you add the keyboard, display, bazel, back plane, speakers, peripheral jacks and the rest, you'll be closing in on the range of old Acer Notebook, over $100, for a disguised smartphone. I bought my wife an Acer D521 four years ago. It is still running champ for her in her browsing and email. She gets four hours on her battery. With 4GB RAM and it's dual core, I suspect it would smoke a Cortex-A53 device in every way but energy consumption. Amps (power) and speed are synonymous. Low power means low speed. I saw a Dell ad on TV yesterday advertising an XPS 13 ultrabook with 18 hour battery life. I doubt we'd see that in real usage, but hitting 12 hours consistently regardless of what you were running would be great. It costs from $800 to $1000 depending on your core choice.

[vsreeser]

No. A pure Geek project in a time when DYI geeks are becoming a rarity. Too rare to support a mass market.

That $5 CPU is a Cortex-A53 with four core and a max speed of 800MHz. Designed for smartphones, wifi's and TV top boxes, it wouldn't, IMO, make for a good client or server PC. I'd rather build a PI 2.

When you add the keyboard, display, bazel, back plane, speakers, peripheral jacks and the rest, you'll be closing in on the range of old Acer Notebook, over $100, for a disguised smartphone. I bought my wife an Acer D521 four years ago. It is still running champ for her in her browsing and email. She gets four hours on her battery. With 4GB RAM and it's dual core, I suspect it would smoke a Cortex-A53 device in every way but energy consumption. Amps (power) and speed are synonymous. Low power means low speed. I saw a Dell ad on TV yesterday advertising an XPS 13 ultrabook with 18 hour battery life. I doubt we'd see that in real usage, but hitting 12 hours consistently regardless of what you were running would be great. It costs from $800 to $1000 depending on your core choice.

I wouldn't build it either. Just wondering if others would. I might get the parts and have my son bulld one as a learning exercise. I will probably build another PC though. There is no cost benefit, but with enough research, you can get all the fastest parts to work together

[vsreeser]

Anyone have a really good site that will show me how to get a pi, build it, and set it up for home automation? Want to do it on a shoestring budget cuz raising two teens is EXPENSIVE (worth every penny though)

[DoYouKubuntu]

No. I'm way past the "way too lazy" marker on the enthusiasm/energy scale now!

Besides, it looks pretty...cheap, you know?!

[DoYouKubuntu]

raising two teens is EXPENSIVE (worth every penny though)

You know the best part of your kids' teen years? THEY'RE OVER EVENTUALLY!!

[Qqmike]

ASUS (mobo) has pretty good DIY support materials, including decent YouTube vids. For desktops.

[woodsmoke]

Lol Well IF............ I could actually get the COMPLETE kit for:

with the Chinese company pricing it at $5 USD.

plus shipping I would probably do it since I am now officially older than dirt and single and all the wemmin in my age group are cougars! lol

However, more to the point, as mention above it is an ARM device and there are all sorts of hoops to jump through with that, but Ubu has an active ARM developement.

BUT........ saying that....

I've torn apart and rebuilt many lappys, two of which were to use the screen atop an overhead projector to project games on a sheet hung beside a pool so that we could float in the pool imbibing various libations and watching a couple of people duke it out on the latest Duke Nuklem game! lol

But, the point is that lappys like a Sony Vaio are purposely made to foil people wanting to do even basic stuff with the guts so that one is forced to go to the selling store to get repairs.

But, lappys like a Toshiba are easy peasy to tear apart and repair.

So............if the thing really IS designed to be built as a kit, then, given a reasonable instruction sheet, which I would NOT expect in a translation from ANY language into another language.......

it would still be a nice learning experience.

Oh, and If I was going to do a Pi this is probably the only one I would do.

http://makezine.com/projects/build-a...ry-pi-cluster/

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

The Pi 2 is what I'd use for a DIY project. I'd get the kit which includes all the peripheral parts for about $70 and then put Kubunto 14.04 on it:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM/RaspberryPi

http://www.rs-online.com/designspark...up-and-running

I've been thinking that a Pi 2 kit may be just the ticket to get my 9 yr old grandson into learning programming!