People who own laptops today are getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of options there are when it comes to ‘do it yourself’ or ‘barebone’ machines.
If you have a desktop PC you might be familiar with the expression ‘barebones’, which describes the state a machine comes in after you have helped determine, and sometimes build, the interior specification of the equipment and then, in your own time or using the help of a hired professional, add the operating system/additional software to the machine.
Now, thanks to companies such as Scan and OCZ, it is possible to order a do-it-yourself or ‘barebones’ laptop. While these laptops offer a huge degree of flexibility compared to your standard ‘out of the box’ purchases they are still long way from being as adaptable as their desktop cousins. For example, both the above companies provide the case, or chassis, the screen, the keyboard, a touchpad mouse, speakers , battery, processor, dvd writer…. and it’s here that a few minor options differ from company to company. However, you are then expected to provide the RAM, hard drive and operating system (which today could be one of the Windows options, the free Linux options or there are a few specialised systems out there for very specific tasks). Although it seems that the specification of the graphics card is still chosen for you, which will upset a large group of people.
Why on earth would someone want to buy an incomplete, ‘barebones’ laptop? If you enjoy simply pushing a switch and watching the screen light up, then, after using it, you simply leave it there until you might have another E mail to send or need to look up some sports results on the internet, then this probably isn’t the way forward for you. However, if you are more passionate about the capabilities of your laptop then you might prefer to tweak it so playing games is more enjoyable, certain programs run quicker and smoother, or playing at being a computer hardware engineer just fascinates you then paying a little more to be able to customize your machine wont matter.
Yes, that’s right. Even though you are getting an incomplete laptop, going ‘barebones’ means also paying more for the privilege. So it seems now that for the foreseeable future the desktop PC will have the edge over the laptop in areas except portability.
