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Yeah, the fact that I can't find barebones laptop kits for sale, empty laptop cases, and so on pretty much answered that part of it for me. I'm wondering more about whether there's a particular brand of laptop that is better suited to geekish tinkering than others.
If you want to think of it this way - if one manufacturer had to become the industry standard for all other laptops to become compatible with hardware-wise, who would that be? (I'm asking from a techie point of view, not an economic power standpoint.)
Another way to look at it: what laptop brand is least designed to be disposable? 4-5 years down the road when the software demands have risen beyond the capabilities of most modern computers, are there any current laptops that will be able to upgrade to meet the higher demands?
For example, my wife's laptop: Dell 2600 Inspiron... half a gig memory - max. 16mb video card was the biggest thing offered (and therefore the biggest thing compatible). I believe there's a 1.3Ghz processor you can shoehorn in - if you can find it.
And that's it. That's all it will do.
My desktops never go obsolete. Simple attrition keeps them up to date... the oldest, least 'uber' thing is probably what will break next and get replaced by something modern. Little by little they climb the ladder (albeit a couple rungs below the "top").
I'm looking for something (if it exists) in a laptop that, while obviously not that upgradeable, wasn't designed specifically to be thrown away and replaced every few years. Something you can pop the hood on and put a few extra ponies in it when the new kids start smoking you at the track, if you will.
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