One thing that doesn't come up here yet: our partners RBZ have developed an open hardware alternative SOM for MNT Reform based on NXP LS1028A with 2 Cortex-A72 cores and 8 or 16GB RAM. This is currently in the first bringup phase, but sources are already released:
I'm also personally working on a Kintex-7 (FPGA) SOM. This will allow us and others to implement RISC-V or other architectures, incl. retrocomputers and carry them around in a laptop form factor.
Will you offer the MNT Reform with the new SOM (Cortex-A72) when it becomes available? I wanted to pull the trigger on the first batch but needed something a bit faster than a Raspberry Pi.
I am very interested in this, but I am wondering, what is it's mainline support?
I had a Novena, and it was not fun to find out since verious things were not mainlined, I essentially had to patch my own kernel if I wanted to use a newer one.
If you've every wanted a laptop that you could customize and assemble yourself this laptop might be for you. I think it looks interesting for the mechanical keyboard alone.
The idea is nice, but wow it's expensive for what you do get.
The CPU being a quad-core A53 architecture is basically Raspberry Pi - but the 3B rather than the 4; only 4GB RAM; only Full HD resolution. You pay $999 and that doesn't include any storage or even the wifi card.
The comparison with an entry-level MacBook Air is sort of horrifying. Same price but just a completely different league in almost every respect.
Keep in mind this is boutique hardware with very low volume, the device has a mechanical keyboard, and the case is milled and anodized aluminum. We are 3 people in the shop plus a network of freelancers. But unlike Apple, we can make open hardware and happily give you full control over the device, and you can communicate directly with us. This is a totally different scenario.
The CPU/RAM module is not the price defining aspect here, and we're ready for faster chips when they come out. The idea is you can upgrade for a fraction of the price of buying a new device.
Are you saying that it's possible to upgrade the CPU? If so, that would be game changing and would put the price point in a whole new light. I can imagine "upgrading" my computer to a faster processor like we do with RAM. That means you wouldn't have to dispose the old machine and re-install all the software. That's gotta be worth something to some people!
There are a lot of people alive now who were not caring-about-socketed-CPUs-in-laptops-years-old when that was a thing (and even then, I had at least three 386SX laptops with soldered-on CPUs)
I do get that this isn't trying to compete with the closed-hardware market; no-one is cross-shopping the MNT Reform 2 with a MacBook Air (which does also have a milled, anodized aluminum case).
It's mostly just a note of despair about how large the gap is; you really have to care about the open hardware aspect to make the choice.
+1 on the aesthetic choices with this laptop (and its documentation!). i'm not a backer but have been following along and it's just lovely and thoughtful throughout.
i guess one major reason i'd be hesitant to buy is that i'm not sure i'd love a trackball, and i've been spoiled by apple's trackpads. maybe this could force me into practicing more keyboard-only navigation though...
Hi, we offer MNT Reform with a custom glass trackpad as well! You can even swap the trackpad and trackball modules, and we offer them separately if you want to try another one later:
I love the MNT Reform and almost placed an order, but now I’m sort-of glad I decided not to. I’m not sure I can justify spending over $1k for a machine that struggles to run the Grammarly browser extension.
I had a question about the arm chips used in this project.
The shipping version seems to use Cortex-a53 while the development version seems to use Cortex-a72.
Does anyone know if these chips have Intel Management Engine or AMD PSP type backdoors built into them? I'm looking for hardware that is free of management engines and hardware and software backdoors.
Open hardware doesn't mean anything if the chip is sending your encryption keys and passwords to the NSA (or their Chinese equivalents) over the network.
I have been following the development[0] of these laptops for a while and I am really impressed and intrigued! The freedom to hack and modify your laptop seems amazing and the design decisions should really appeal to the ThinkPad crowd (like myself, writing this on a X201).
https://source.mnt.re/reform/mnt-reform-layerscape-ls1028a-s...
I'm also personally working on a Kintex-7 (FPGA) SOM. This will allow us and others to implement RISC-V or other architectures, incl. retrocomputers and carry them around in a laptop form factor.