The long-awaited open-source Novena laptop is now available via a limited Crowd Supply campaign run by Bunnie Huang and Sean Cross.
$1,995 reserves a laptop, while $500 buys a barebones Novena board which can be used to create a custom laptop or desktop system.
Additional pledge levels include an all-in-one-desktop for $1,195 equipped with a 13.3 inch, 920 x 1080 pixel IPS display and an “Heirloom Laptop” with a hand-crafted wood and aluminum case for a cool $5,000.
Key Novena laptop specs include a 1.2 GHz Freescale i.MX6 quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 240GB solid state drive, a 45Whr battery, WiFi, HDMI, Xilinx FPGA and Debian Linux.
As Liliputing’s Brad Linder notes, the Novena is designed to be completely hackable.
”About half the space inside the laptop case is empty, allowing users to build a system with the features they’d like. And since the designs are all available, as well as the software source code, folks who know what they’re doing should be able to truly make their Novena laptops their own,” he explained.
“It’s a niche device that’s generated a little interest… and thanks to the era of crowdfunding, it’s a device that might actually move from a prototype and set of blueprints into something a small number of people can actually buy even though it’s something no major PC maker would probably ever offer.”
