Open Lunchbox Forums

Just having read about "Equation Group" the importance of free as in freedom firmware cannot be stressed enough. Something hidden in firmware is always a problem, like the mentioned SMM. Transparent to the OS (and also any malware protection means) this can do things on the computer with more than root rights. Also, with the implementation of a network stack in UEFI it is able to send data and receive further commands remotely.

I guess "embedded controller" means the same as Super-IO chip? Some chip responsible for low bandwidth communication, classic interfaces and so on?
Those have become a serious issue recently. Normally this was something that always worked. And for the last 2 years I stumbled over more and more mainboards with chips that were unsupported by kernel / lm_sensors. Thus no sensor readings, no flashrom and then no coreboot possibilities.
And no documentations, chip types that seemed to be custom tailored for a run of notebooks / mainboards and nobody would feel responsible (laptop vendor / chip maker).
It is a catastrophe.

If those chips are well documented and work with a free driver that would be a great opportunity. Is there any quick comparison of what functions are supported?
That also means the firmware that runs in this (ARM? AVR?) chip is written by the community and it does not contain any blobs that might trouble later?

OMG. 3:2 exists? There is something besides 16:9? Awesome! (Okay, I know and use 16:10 but besides some freaking expensive Eizo dedicated screens with even classic 4:3 and 1:1 I didn't notice anything like that.) And there is resolution for laptops above 768 lines? OMG! It is even IPS! (I think I can't hold the tears! ) Wouldn't that be "Shut up and take my money?"
Which prices are we looking at? This one is just 44 USD? Where is the caveat? There must be something wrong with it, right?

On the other hand, wow. A 12" with such a high resolution. But that would be a niiice note-book. With 12 inch the kdb might be a bit on the small side but I could imagine a nice lightweight typing machine with long battery lifetime for traveling and writing or reading.

I don't know since I do not have much insight into laptop panels. But what I know is that AMD APUs/GPUs won't have much support for LVDS in the future. I think they are already phasing out support for that so you would need an adapter chip if you still wanted to support the LVDS funtionality but go with e.g. a Carizzo build.

I guess it might fit here in "peripherals and ports"

So interfaces to the outside world. Personally I am on the standpoint that one can never have enough interfaces.
I know a lot of people might have a different opinion.

For my part I'd be happy with:
* parallel (LPT) interface (microcontroller programming, still works kind of driverless and cheap via a self soldered LPT adapter)
* serial interface (a lot of machines are still driven via RS-232)
* PS/2 kbd/mouse
(yeah, all the classics)

* VGA (beamers, lots of old beamers around)
* some newer digital interface. HDMI is wide spread but sucks. Okay, anything with digital restriction management sucks, but HDMI is soo limited. Resolution, no adapters allowed and so on. I was quite fond of DVI and DP is at least VESA specified so it can't be that bad?

* I don't know about eSATA. Never used it. And afaik there is a version that provides also power over eSATA (which would make sense) and one that doesn't.

* Maybe something for external sound sources / output. I guess it won't be a multimedia audio recording studio notebook. And people into professional sound biz better look for a box with real sound cards with awesome SNR, I/O ports and such, that most onboard chips won't provide.

* A sane amount of USB. Especially if there is no classic port you have to do everything by USB and then you need a whole lot of them. Or carry USB hubs around and see for enough power supply. And so the problems start.

* Card reader: I love compact flash. But then, it is "large" (whatsoever people call large these days) so nearly anybody ever included it in a laptop.

* Ethernet. Of course. 10/100/(1000)

Did I forget anything?

Camera = no go. Privacy issue. Though I admit that a camera would already contain a sensor by itself.
A shut-able cam and mic would be neat, by the way.

I do have an Eizo IPS screen as of late and it has this ambient light function. I do see benefits but also drawbacks. So it has a motion (?) sensor, something that is supposed to detect "presence". It switches the screen off once it does not detect someone for ... I think it was adjustable... like 3 minutes. But I normally do this setting in KDE or xorg.conf by just blanking / DPMSing the screen after 3 minutes of inactivity. And some video players will override this, luckily.
The other thing is ambient light. It works so-so. Sometimes it is too dark for me just because my head is blocking the lamp from the ceiling that is behind me. So the monitor thinks it is dark and it doesn't need to glow so much and reduces brightness to a point that is already uncomfortable.
Some other times it works nicely and doesn't blind you when the room is darker.

If the feature is not too expensive and can be switched off / overridden it should be fine to implement.

Coreboot FTW! Safe, "simple" and speedy!

But some question are still open:
a) SMM support? Is it needed? Or could one build a computer without that NSA-ish backdoor?
b) Which payload? Does it make sense to have a user interface for some basic configuation at low level, say e.g. SeaBIOS? Some OSs actually still expect a BIOS (or at least some API/ABI) of that kind to be present. Iirc. some Beasties need it and Windows. So if some people would like to use a dual boot one might have to provide a payload option.
c) How often would we need updating a payload?
1. flash write cycles and lifetime
2. how complicated will it be?
So one could payload SeaBIOS plus a bootloader, if that does not need to be updated weekly cause of security flaws or bugs. Even a kernel? I update kernels relatively often (Gentoo rolling release, and AMD APUs/GPUs on free driver stack so using recent kernels makes sense to me ). Writing monthly or more often to the chip might destroy it. So maybe no kernel?
Also depends on the size of the flash memory, of course.

OMG, would a modern Windows (in case somebody would really want to hurt him/herself with W8) even require UEFI functions?

Another question added: What about AGESA? I know AMD is nice and would likely give the newest blob to any Coreboot development. But: it still is a blob and recently on the CCC (chaos communication congress 2014) some Czech hacker had a talk about some security issues he found in the code. AMD fixed it, but of course it will takes ages for mainboard vendors / UEFI- or BIOSmakers to implement and deliver to the end user.

I don't know what people will use the device for. I mean, I never saw that much sense in playing movies on small screens and the tiny speakers of a standard laptop. Still, it shouldn't be totally squeaky.
I think the "Always Innovating touch book" had some small but fairly okay speakers built in.

I think it depends on the aim of laptop. Should it be small, high mobility ulta-long-runtime? Then leave it.
Should it me more allround? Include it.

I personally am a fan of "real" computers where you can exchange and update everything. Of course due to their compact design this is less of an option for laptops. But once left away in design (the space, the interfaces) it would be hard to add one later, save external ones (USB). Umm, most AMD SOCs seem to be based now on A68 chipset which offers 2 SATA 600 ports. Which would be one SSD/HDD and e.g. an optical option. Or eSATA maybe? (Never used any eSATA yet, though.)

Well, the other problem is that people have different views here. I still do use DVDs. Proprietary software, my own backups, music, movies, a lot of that is on CD, DVD, BluRay media.
Then, how much sense would be in BluRay? The DRM of BluRay is horrible and gives you a really hard time if you want to view BluRay in Linux. Even on W32 it is a pest. But DVDs are common, also DRM free stuff and libdvdcss takes care of the rest quite reliably.
For me it would be nice. But other people might say they don't use DVDs anymore cause they download everything or use flash media (USB sticks) or external USB-2-SATA-HDDs.

So for me:
Nice to have one.
If it hurts too many people, or would increase the price in an enigmatic way, leave it.
If it hurts battery runtime significantly (when idle), leave it.

My favourite keyboard would be something with IBM Model M Buckling Spring.
Cherry green or blue or brown (clickless) would also do. ;-)
But I guess that won't be easy.

Actually I can't stand most Laptop keyboards today. First it is this chiclet build, the keys don't feel right, there is no tactile feedback, they are not concave - so the finger can't rest in them, travel distance is a matter of taste maybe. But then even more horrible: the layout. I grew up with my standard European (German) 102 layout. But then, all of a sudden, came Windows keys. In on of the worst places possible: between Ctrl and Alt which I use very often. Then keyboard vendors thought it was a good idea to place a PowerDown key right under the del...PgDn block. So you would accidentally hit the key 25 times per day. And so on.
I see that the place on laptops is limited but I don't see a reason for tiny cursor keys, not separeted. I don't see reason for 10 windows and multimedia keys (even replacing F1...F12, so you can't Alt-F4 without messing around with keyboard drivers or special hotkey switching), but the lack of a second Shift or Ctrl key.
And every laptop is different.

I never had the joy to have an IBM(!)-labeled Thinkpad (keyboard) of my own, just guest wise. They were quite good. But I noticed that Lenovo did a switch to lower quality.

So whatever keyboard it is, keep to classic and sane layouts. And when it has some tactile feedback for typing that would be awesome.
I think a keyboard is one of the main I/O parts and thus most important, regardless what you do: writing or gaming and thus it should be of good quality.
But I don't need to tell you that.