http://www.theinquirer.net/

BUILDING YOUR OWN computer has gone beyond nailing a few off-the-shelf components together and overclocking the RAM, with the announcement that Via will be offering CAD files of its Openbook laptop to anyone who’s interested.

The design drawings are offered for download under a Creative Common Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license, but you’ll probably need to hire a few engineering Phds and come up with a couple of million quid in development capital to make it all work out.

If you do decide to open a fab in your garden shed, your new plant will be churning out laptops powered by the C7-M ULV processor and the VX800 IGP chipset. It’ll be a small, 1kg, 8.9″ mini-notebook design that supports screen resolutions of up to 1024×600 and DirectX 9.0 3D graphics. Video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DiVX video formats, a VMR capable HD video processor and 8-channel HD audio are also included.

The mini-note reference design offers broadband connectivity though two internal modules, one featuring WiFi, Bluetooth, and optional AGPS connections and the second one offering a choice of WiMAX, HSDPA, or EV-DO/W-CDMA.

It also comes with three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, and audio-in/audio-out jacks as well as a 4-in-1 card reader (SD/SDIO/MMC/MS) and a 2 mega-pixel dual-headed web camera.

The design supports a wide range of operating system environments, including Vista Basic, Windows XP, and various Linux distributions. The device features up to 2GB DDR2 DRAM and can be equipped with a choice of hard disk drive and solid state storage options.