this kinda thing is easy if you want a desktop. but if you want something a little more portable, the proprietary route is the only way to go, and of course that means oem partitions. of course the first thing i do when i get such a machine, is repartition and format the drives. in a perfect world there would be standardized notebook form factors and interfaces. you could take a mobo out of notebook a and stick it in notebook b, you could change screens with relative ease, you could upgrade the video chipset. now there have been attempts to do some of these things, but none of them have caught on.
i imagine laptop manufacturers' profits would take a substantial hit if they became user-buildable like desktops. i don't think they're gonna try very hard to make it so. hell, mine requires so many proprietary drivers and software to run the damn thing i don't even feel safe reformatting and installing a fresh XP on it.
indeed. manufacturers hate standards because that means letting other people reap the profits. instead of buying some 3rd party laptop mobo for $60, you have to buy the specific board for that case, for $160. none of the parts are user serviceable, except perhaps drives, cpu, ram. really i wouldn't mind being locked into a manufacturer if they kept a case standard, provided replacement parts, upgrades, and service manuals. half the time you cant even get a laptop open to work on it, not without breaking something. they would rather you throw the whole thing away and buy a new one, which contributes to e-waste. at least standardize a laptop size gpu module. last laptop had a pcix module for its wifi, which i assume is an interchangeable standard. if they had a 16x version that also had video connections for the monitor and video ports, what would be awesome. alienware had something like it but it was likely proprietary.
hardware aside laptop driver tend to be somewhat intrusive. gpu drivers tend to be reference drivers with stuff added to them by the manufacturer, and it is likely the manufacturer will never update them past the initial release. drivers for hotkeys tend to be required, yet completely unconfigurable. software re-installation on laptops is usually partial. you can never find them all. theres always something that is missing. or something that is the wrong version or whatever. yea i know im preaching to the choir on this one but this kinda thing pisses me off.
