In my opinion it was the wrong decision not to concentrate on selected hardware.
That is a two way street. If you choose a hardware configuration, by the time you have it settled, and working, the hardware is no longer available, and nobody wants to buy it anyway, because there is newer stuff available. .
Hi Doug,
as I am preparing for the User Meeting in Cologne I would like to give you one example why I still am of the opinion that concentrating on selected Hardware would have been the best and only possible choice:
The X200t I use from Lenovo:
- first models have been availiable in 2009
- you can still buy them for reasonable prices
- you can get all (Windows) Drivers from the Lenovo Homepage ever since
In 2009 I bought my first one, it took me a lot of time and help to figure out how to get the hardware supported best by eComstation and OS/2.
Finally in 2010 I reached the goal with a lot of help from the community.
Almost EVERYTHING was and is working since:
- ACPI
- AHCI
- Sound
- Grafic with Snap
- LAN
- WLAN (with an easy to patch BIOS and repalcing Intel 4965 WLAN card)
- UMTS / HSPA (!)
- USB
- Card Reader
- the Stylus
- the Touch (but I do not have a touch model)
...
I do not know if there is another "modern Laptop" since than around that is that stable and well supported!
There is a big variety of X200T models, meanwhile I sold mine in early 2012 - but later I discovered that I probably will never find one Laptop with that abilities again.
So this summer I bought one from ebay that was marked as "used" but it has never been used before, the only thing was that the box has been opened before.
So I bought it, patched the BIOS, replaced the WLAN and restored my Clone on it - and it was up and running from the first second on!
So - this is running already for more than four years now.
It is still the best choice (if you do not need the Tablet one can choose the X200 as well, the same should work with the T400 and T500 series...) for an eComStation Laptop I guess.
Imagine what could have been, if....
But - what shells :-)