Notebook form factor - why not?

[Pandamonium]

Does anyone have any speculation to offer in the way of explaining the lack of any notebook form factors?

The way I see it, there are clear groups of notebooks by size: 12", 13.3", 14", 15", 16/17", other. All the really wierd/new/small stuff found in asian markets would fall into other. If you wanted to condense the categories, they could be 12", 15", 17" (remniscent of Apple's offerings), and other.

Since notebook sales are picking up while desktop sales either stagnate or decline (I'm guessing about the desktop sales portions...), wouldn't it be beneficial for the industry to develop form factor standards for notebooks? I think such standards would be a boon to consumers, and may even spur a trend of notebook modding.

Is this thinking too far out of line with reality?

 

[exar333]

It may sound naive to think like that...but I have been wanting a standard like that for a long time...the companies are making so much money of proprietary aaccessories tho, that it will be a while for such a thing is implemented...IMHO...would I like to see it ? Hell Yeah!

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: xjedimasterx
Does anyone have any speculation to offer in the way of explaining the lack of any notebook form factors?



The way I see it, there are clear groups of notebooks by size: 12", 13.3", 14", 15", 16/17", other. All the really wierd/new/small stuff found in asian markets would fall into other. If you wanted to condense the categories, they could be 12", 15", 17" (remniscent of Apple's offerings), and other.



Since notebook sales are picking up while desktop sales either stagnate or decline (I'm guessing about the desktop sales portions...), wouldn't it be beneficial for the industry to develop form factor standards for notebooks? I think such standards would be a boon to consumers, and may even spur a trend of notebook modding.



Is this thinking too far out of line with reality?

It's called industrial design... and it's something practiced by all manufacturers.... Apple calls their look and feel of their power books and iBooks "industrial design" as does IBM of theirs....

Note-Notebooks are built on standards -just not from a design perspective. So it would be more accurate to call the design proprietary and the guts built on standards ie; they generally use the same memory, chipsets, video, HD's, bus speeds, and so forth. In my opinion, the day that the planer design gets standardized is a day I'll stop buying notebooks as then there will be nothing cool about one manufacturers design over another. The laptop market IMO has not yet reached the point of commodity that the desktop space has. Look at what IBM is doing with their ThinkPads and you'll see what I mean.

What you want represents a niche market for manufacturers.... even if one were to offer a truly buildable machine, it would be the red headed step child of the industry and the components/design there of would still be different from everyone elses.