Re: [Trisquel-users] The future of Libre Computing: Crowd Funding Campaign Starts Now

[chris]

I can already tell you that the reason Luke did the 15.6" design rather than  
something smaller was because of popularity. He was wanting to do something  
smaller and I talked him out of it [sort of, I just pointed out the numbers  
didn't work well]. It comes down to demand. There is more demand (statically  
speaking) for 15.6" laptops than anything else. To reduce the risks we went  
with a 15.6" design. It actually was a really smart move because it cut the  
time required to produce a laptop. The design simply wouldn't have worked  
with a smaller screen. Also it was good that we did. The laptop helped us  
reach the goal. Had we gone with a smaller screen the crowd funding campaign  
might have failed. I'd actually be very worried about doing a smaller screen  
design without the cost of the crowd funding campaign being run prior to the  
development work being started. It might not be as expensive now that the  
15.6" laptop is done and there are cards being produced. However the costs  
are still not non-existent. If we [TP] hadn't funded the development this  
campaign would not have succeeded. It would have cost twice as much if not  
more. A copy-cat attempted to do a modular computer and the campaign failed.  
They needed $320,000 USD to pull it off and didn't get anywhere near 20%  
funded. Luke's numbers I don't believe include the real cost of doing this  
work either. Normally you would take into account *an actual salary* and it  
would probably be $65,000 USD minimum, plus administrative costs, taxes, and  
so on would have increased it to $80,000 if not more. Then that doesn't  
include the cost of actually manufacturing samples or other work which might  
need to be done.