It doesnt quite work that way...

It doesnt quite work that way...

Posted May 15, 2003 12:25 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
Parent article: Where are the Linux laptops?

>If the Dell, Toshiba and other big vendors started demanding
> Linux-compatible parts, it wouldn't take long before their upstream
> vendors responded.

From when I dealt with various vendors.. it would take quite a while for it to occur. Laptops are not like desktops in that they have much different concerns. First is weight, second is power consumption, and the third is features. Each one of those has to be designed to the half-penny as everything has to be imbedded and usually designed close to a year in advance on parts that dont exist yet. The margins on a laptop are slim to none with companies like Dell making money off of the thing that if your CFO likes his laptop he will ok that bigger order of Dell workstations for the company. When they do make money it is if they sell large orders of the same laptop.
If they dont see mass orders of something they cut the production line quickly in order to cut losses.

---

(Log in to post comments)