-------- Original Message -------- From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces@lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Eco-Conscious Computing arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] why are notebook devices not usb? Date: Sat, 27 May 2017 18:56:18 +0100
On Sat, May 27, 2017 at 6:16 PM, Christopher Havel laserhawk64@gmail.com wrote:
Money. It's cheaper to do it that way..
yyep. this s pretty much.. errr... on the money
An unforeseen answer. I thought it would be lower priced to make an usb device one time and several notebook manufacturers would buy the device for their notebook. The going for thinner argument sounds relevant. I thought making proprietary devices would make it more difficult and expensive for other manufacturers to make the same devices. Remarkable that it is lower priced for a manufacturer to make a device by themselves.
There's also the form factor to consider -- to an extent, there are no standards for laptop gadgetry because there's no way to do that. Different laptop sizes and shapes require differently-sized and -shaped crap inside.
... all completely optimised and customised based around what they can get hold of, or what the reference design from intel is (which will have specific power requirements and thermal requirements)...then there is the constant demand for "thin-ness" which, as chris says, means that a CUSTOM CONNECTOR gets ordered and made... and you can't get hold of them.
ron i wrote a long time ago when developing the tablet, about using a single embedded controller which only costs $1, instead of putting in a $1 USB hub, a $1.50 USB camera, a $1 USB audio IC and so on.
it all adds up and the margins are so insanely low on laptops - ten percent FOR THE ENTIRE CHAIN right from factory to sales - that they just cannot justify the extra cost.
l.
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On Mon, May 29, 2017 at 10:02 PM, ronwirring@safe-mail.net wrote:
Money. It's cheaper to do it that way..
yyep. this s pretty much.. errr... on the money
An unforeseen answer. I thought it would be lower priced to make an usb device one time and several notebook manufacturers would buy the device for their notebook. The going for thinner argument sounds relevant. I thought making proprietary devices would make it more difficult and expensive for other manufacturers to make the same devices.
exactly. thus raising the barrier for the other manufacturers and, thus, the logic goes, making sure that they get more market share.
Remarkable that it is lower priced for a manufacturer to make a device by themselves.
there are only a handful of actual mechanical keyboard design/manufacturing companies, the main one i know about is chicony, so they do at least use the same suppliers. so why don't they collaborate and cooperate??
i phoned one of them up one day, just to see what happened. i wanted to use one of their "no-brand" keyboard designs, i explained what i was doing, and why.
the reason i asked for "no-brand" is so as not to step on the COPYRIGHTED NATURE OF THE DESIGN PROCESS THAT THEY DO FOR THEIR BILLION-DOLLAR CUSTOMERS.
a manager higher up the chain still said "no", but that's not the point.
the point is: *despite* using the same suppliers they only do so because it is more cost-competitivee to do so. if they could possibly make damn sure that their quotes competitive edge quotes is maintained through total secrecy and total incompatibility by not using shared parts that would result in a chance of competitors making more money than them they would do so.
basically you're forgetting that these companies are scrambling and squabbling for tiny profit margins, ron, the consequences of that being that they do *not* want to collaborate. on anything.
what they do with chicony is, if they do have to share the same mechanical frame and key layout (3rd-party "no-brand" designs like Benq) they *totally* redesign the flexible PCB, including a total new layout, total new connector positioning and so on.
as the position of the keyboard connector is an absolutely critical part of the design which is influenced by far more factors than can be listed here the only way to "fix" that is to LITERALLY order a complete new flexible PCB for the keyboard.
l.
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