I would like to get a stripped down laptop with no OS, CPU, RAM or HD and then use Pricewatch to get the rest of these parts at the best price and install these myself.

Does anyone know any good vendors that are accomodative on these things? Is this even worth the savings?

Uh...I don't know as that you can get laptops without the CPU. I'd love someone to say that's wrong, but I've never seen one.

Probably have to be something second-hand. Or something that's been damaged and needs new parts. In fact I can't remember seeing laptop CPU's on sale at any of my usual PC haunts....

Something like the ECS DeskNote would be sort-of what you may want. As the name implies, this isn't the most portable notebook. By default they come without a battery. Some merchants will even sell them without certain things like memory and hard drives, and they almost always come without an OS loaded.

As far as CPU goes, I am quite certain the P4 versions use a socketed processor, so you could probably buy a low end CPU model and upgrade it.

Laptops are still highly propritary, and as such, noone sells the base units direct to customers. Some laptops now do use standard desktop CPUs, but they really are just portable computers, and not true road warrior laptops. Real laptops will use mobile chips, and most soder the CPU onto the mainboard. RAM is standard for the most part now, but I have never seen a standard for plugging in laptop drives. Most laptops will wrap the 2.5 inch drive in a carrier, and plug it into a propritary IDE connector. Same for CD drives and such.

Yeah, we had an Compaq Armada m700 that was in a car accident last winter, and we ripped it apart salvaging parts from it. The CPU was soldered to the mobo - and the heat sink was all integrated into it.

Yeah, the airbag hit the back of the screen (it was on someone's lap at the time) and bent and curled it back and into the guy's chest (He's ok... nothing serious).

Cell phones are bad enough but don't read and type on a blackberry while driving...

Yeah, we had an Compaq Armada m700

I could probably strip one down blindfolded. Our team at work got a ton of broken equipment quite a while back, and most of the laptops were M700s. I tore them down, salvaged as much as possible, and got quite a few up. Usually a swap of the DC/DC converter board would get quite a few up that seemed completly dead.

I knew they were proprietory but I wasn't really sure to what degree all the parts were integrated. It looks like I'd be better off with getting something that's hardware complete. Surely though, they have them without an OS.

Are there any good small time venders other than big guys like Dell, Compaq or Toshiba?