If you build it...

...would you be happy? I was checking out the Asus line of laptops and while looking at their resellers' sites, stumbled upon bareback notebooks. Has anyone done this before? For those not in the know, a bareback notebook is similar to it's desktop counterpart. Yuo get the notebook chassis minus the CPU, memory, and HD. In some cases, the chassis can be purchased for as little as $600. With a price like that, it would be within reason to assemble a 2.0ghz laptop for under $1500. The only aspect I don't like is you have to stick with the feature set built in to the chassis. That is to say if you wanted 2 USB ports instead of 3, you'd have to find a chassis with that configuration; it isn't as dynamic as putting together a desktop. I was curious as to how many people have gone this route and what the experiences are. I'm thinking I might look into this option just for the heck of it.

 

I've pondered this before as well, and I know a few posters have actually gone forward with the Asus product you mentioned. I don't know though...noteoboks have a knack for having issues and I want an 800 number to call when something goes wrong. In my book it's worth paying the extra few hundred bucks for support. Then again, I run my life and business on this thing, so it's more important to me than say setting up a gaming rig. For something not life altering if it dies, the barebones might be a fun way to save a little dough.

Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com

 

I feel managing those issues is all part of the challenge. I taught myself about PCs by putting together my first one and going through all of the trials and tribulations. It gave me a great understanding of PC hardware and I consider myself pretty technical in that aspect. I agree that for the money one would be spending, it would be nice to have a resource to turn to. But again, all part of the fun.

If I can find a barebone package that supports the HT processors, I'm going to give it a shot. At this point, I have a machine for work so it would be just something to tinker around with. I hope that Alienware and Nvidia can take the technology used for upgradeable video cards and expand it to perhaps a standard in notebooks. I'd like to be able to swap out, say, firewire functionality for a serial port or IR; or maybe use a different companies video card. Once I make a decision and find a package, I'll post my experiences.