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Comment by shurcooL | Hacker News Reader

Did I understand what you said at the end correctly, are you willing to commit to buy 8 million dollars worth of laptops?

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Thats what happens if you take your privacy seriously. You buy one-off Laptops that you can use like paper tissues.

Yes. (and then sell them, obviously, ideally for much more than $8mm)

You think there is a market for 10k of those? </sceptic>

Not as random laptops, no.

If you see a market oppurtunity like this, I suggest you go for it. There are many companies which will make you a custom laptop for such a quantity. Good luck!

The problem is the brand specification. Nobody wants unbranded laptops.

I (anecdotally) disagree. I'd love to have a good-spec laptop that had no logos or branding on it.

Agreed. I love Apple's hardware (much more than their user interface), but I dislike being in public with a giant glowing half eaten apple.

It's not so much the logos or the branding, it's the build quality. I used to run Ubuntu on old ThinkPads, ditched it like an ugly girlfriend once I could afford a Macbook Pro. Old ThinkPads were a step up from commodity PC laptops, which were a step up from desktops. In a brief fit of FOSS zeal I bought a System76 Galago Pro, but the build quality was so inferior to a Macbook Pro that I relegated it to desktop duty. If I felt the need to move off of Apple hardware for whatever reason for my primary ride, it'd be back to a ThinkPad.

Rdl specified Dell or Lenovo also for the reason that the supply chain for those two ecosystems are well-developed enough that providing customer support won't be a huge hassle.

I totally agree with what you're saying here.. That's why I sand "good spec" laptop. ;-)

But yes the question is whether or not that actually exists.

If there was then System76 would be using that provider. Actually, if there was, then everybody else's laptops wouldn't be so horrible, either.

I'd seriously consider it. It would not be a sole criteria, but it is important to me.

This is a perfect scenario to test the demand will kickstarter

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