News Palmer Luckey considering entering laptop market with fully US-made model, wants to know if you'd spend 20% more for an American-made PC

[locolalo]

Yes of course.
Let me spend 20% more so my data can be siphoned to Palantir and used to better spy on the American people.

Daily reminder that China spying on you is less harmful than the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. spying on you.

 

[bit_user]

Seriously? You think that there are any factories in the US that can make modern 7 and 8 layer boards?

Yes, here's one:

https://rushpcb.com/

Every piece that is attached is also made in Asia too.

Perhaps there's not much sense in onshoring manufacturing of the lower-value parts, but some of these can certainly be made here. In something like a laptop, I think most of what's not integrated into the SoC are related to power-handling and some of the I/O ports.

 

[askepticstill]

Under no circumstances would I be willing to pay 20+ percent more for a laptop. Hardware is supposed to become cheaper to make and therefore lower prices.

"Buy American, We are far more expensive!" Sounds like buying an NFT

 

[mac_angel]

20% more than Apple's ridiculous prices? F no!

 

[RandomlyGeneratedUsername]

I often consider where something is made before buying it but on that note I'm not buying anything from someone associated with Palantir.

 

[uplink-svk]

Problem is, that it's not gonna be +20%, but +200%, at least for Europe. So no thank You, I'll buy the standard Taiwanese one for some time in the future.

 

[AloofBrit]

This was doing the rounds a few weeks ago:

https://afina.com/blogs/news/made-in-usa

tl;dr they gave folks a choice between the same product "Made in USA" vs "Made in Asia" and no one bought the more expensive USA product

 

[HansSchulze]

Like the poster above, if a laptop were fully and easily repairable, we're made out of durable maerials like aluminum, had great specs as to ensure it would be relevant for at least 5 years, and didn't ship full of garbage like so many models, then yes I'd pay 20% more, especially if they had an Apple like trade in program so you could recover a decent part of your investment. This goes double if it were also upgradeable.

Now if it were the same plastic body with meh specs and basically zero repairibily like we see in Chinese made models, then absolutely not.

Upgradable costs even more. Nvidia spent years trying to convince Quanta MSI et al to use a slotted GPU, cost adder was around 100$. Even memory sticks are soldered down these days to save 5$.
Robotics would help, but those are expensive and still need supervision and programming and fine tuning. Tesla took years to do that to their production line. Better off buying 1200$ laptop every 3-5 years. CPUs aren't getting faster. But Arm makes them cheaper. Software is getting fatter because it's not being engineered any more, just assembled. AI might redesign software to be smaller in 5 years.

 

[LordVile]

Nope. I'll buy what's within budget and meets most of my needs and expectations, and from companies with some history of consistent production quality. Basically, if it's a decent Made in China, Taiwan, S.Korea, or Japan one cheaper even after tariffs, I'll buy that.

If I want a fancy laptop, it'll be a large Framework one. But I'm sure as hell not paying 20% more just for a Made in America tag when it's not at least 40% better than a cheaper foreign-made one.

I mean with framework you’re overpaying for a laptop pretending to be more repairable than others despite having things like soldered on ports which even Apple doesn’t do

 

[bit_user]

Even memory sticks are soldered down these days to save 5$.

LPDDR5 had to be soldered down, until we got LPCAMM. With regular SODIMMs, the signal integrity wasn't good enough.

CPUs aren't getting faster.

SPECint rate=1 says otherwise. But yes, the generational single-threaded speed gains aren't as big as they were 20+ years ago.

Software is getting fatter because it's not being engineered any more, just assembled.

The proliferation of containers is adding quite a bit of bloat. I can confirm that native code is still written and leaner solutions are still generally preferred.

AI might redesign software to be smaller in 5 years.

What will happen is that everything which could be containerized will be, by then. So, this phase is sort of like a speed bump, and we'll have gotten over it.

 

[USAFRet]

AI might redesign software to be smaller in 5 years.

Or AI might see the increasing capabilities of hardware, and redesign to take advantage of that. And damn the bloat...

 

[bit_user]

Or AI might see the increasing capabilities of hardware, and redesign to take advantage of that. And damn the bloat...

Two words: memory wall.

It traditionally refers to the growing speed disparity between DRAM and CPU cores, but we're also seeing a dramatic slowing in DRAM density scaling and especially GB/$. So, I don't know that we can entirely afford to say "damn the bloat". At least, not like we used to.

The Memory Wall: Past, Present, and Future of DRAM

Winners & Losers in the 3D DRAM Revolution The world increasingly questions the death of Moore’s Law, but the tragedy is that it already died over a decade ago with 0 fanfare or headlines. The …

semianalysis.com

Then again, maybe 3D DRAM will save us. But, it'll probably take like 5 years to get here, and there could still be bandwidth problems if we haven't moved to HBM-style on-package memory by then.

 

[USAFRet]

Two words: memory wall.

It traditionally refers to the growing speed disparity between DRAM and CPU cores, but we're also seeing a dramatic slowing in DRAM density scaling and especially GB/$. So, I don't know that we can entirely afford to say "damn the bloat". At least, not like we used to.

I'm not saying that 'we' can or will.

Just that the 'AI' does not care.

 

[King_V]

The bitter cynic in me says it can be done, and the guy's probably thinking prison labor.

 

[wwenze1]

He probably means after tariffs!
: D

Yeah, in that case you could just use a 44% tariff, but we'll see if any PC-exporting countries end up with one that high. Not to mention that I'm still unclear about the current status of USMCA. I thought the fentanyl tariffs on Mexico applied only to stuff not covered by USMCA, yet I think USMCA should apply to manufactured goods, like PCs.

"But tariffs are paid only by USA consumers!" - Some internet guy

 

[ezst036]

As close as we're ever likely to get.

No cigar though.

Framework's closeness stays within doors. When Lian Li or Corsair or whomever start making entirely empty laptop cases we will know we have arrived at our destination.

TBH I don't even think Seasonic has bothered to start making power supplies for Framework. Do they?

It's just such a terrible market.

 

[bit_user]

TBH I don't even think Seasonic has bothered to start making power supplies for Framework. Do they?

You mean the internal part?

As for external laptop power supplies, I have a 12V 60W Seasonic power brick, but they have since gotten out of that market. More recently, I got a medical-grade power brick from MeanWell, but it's not GAN-based and that's what you really want for size & efficiency.

 

[diannes2]

I would not buy a laptop made in the USA, seeing as I'm Canadian and doing my best to boycott American products to the greatest extent possible.

 

[Freedomlover456]

Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey has repeatedly floated the idea of producing a laptop in the U.S. that would cost 20% more than competitive offerings.

Palmer Luckey considering entering laptop market with fully US-made model, wants to know if you'd spend 20% more for an American-made PC : Read more

I would spend up to 30% more if it were truly produced in the US. I would have to be in the market for one, of course.

 

[lmcnabney]

Yes, here's one:

https://rushpcb.com/

That isn't a production plant. They are a custom shop that does prototypes for lots of big developers. Their runs number in the dozens - not hundreds of thousands. Using shops like them for a laptop would add a couple grand to the price of each item.

 

[bit_user]

That isn't a production plant. They are a custom shop that does prototypes for lots of big developers. Their runs number in the dozens - not hundreds of thousands. Using shops like them for a laptop would add a couple grand to the price of each item.

I found some others, but I was trying to confirm exactly where their production facilities were, and decided that link proves the point that we definitely can do it here.

So, it seems your real complaint is just about scale, which is somewhat easily solved. Also, there's no way these laptops will sell in 100k volumes. The first production runs will definitely be more like 10k volumes. If they manage to find a market for these products, that will buy some time for them to scale up production by the second or 3rd generation.

 

[alceryes]

20% more than...? This leaves a lot open to interpretation.

If they are talking about 20% above the overpriced MSRP of a just-released flagship laptop, then I say, "no way."
If they are referring to 20% above the sale price of last year's model (even though there is no newer model) that is a full 50% lower than its release price, then I say, "maybe."

 

[systemBuilder_49]

Dude, just BUY FRAMEWORK and help them get it right! They easily can add 20% value to a crap throwaway Asian laptop, just offer 7yrs of firmware and driver updates and you'll have a winning combination! Make the USA the high quality hardware supplier that it once was - people are sick of cost reduduced asian crap slapped together in only 4 months, half of the design broken on day #1, fixed 2mo later with a late firmware or driver update! My last Asus laptop was $1400 in 2024 and the radio has an antenna/range design problem and the network driver kept crashing until i finally downgraded to the rel0 driver that was never supplied on the laptop!

We still have 6x T4x Thinkpad laptops and we still long for the modular laptop days when virtually all parts on a Thinkpad T40, T41, T42 (Thats ~6 years of laptops!) Interchanged!

 

[NolanBryce]

Made in the USA? I’m not a cheapskate. I’ll pay 50% more if it approaches Apple quality.