ODM's-- Relative Merit??

I'll take a shot at answering your question. Please note that I am not an industry insider. What I have learned I have pieced together from publicly available information during my own search for the "perfect notebook". I have concentrated my attention on manufacturers and vendors who offered the type of notebook I was looking for: a Centrino laptop with ATI 9600 graphics. I can't promise you that every bit of information and opinion I give is 100% correct.

Taiwan-based ODMs make 70% of all notebooks worldwide. The other 30% are made by Korean manufacturers such as Samsung and LG-IBM and by the few name brand computer companies who still make some of their own notebooks such as IBM and Toshiba. Of the 70% of notebooks made by Taiwan-based companies, 75% of these are actually manufactured in mainland China. The Taiwan-based ODMs have other factories in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Mexico.

The best websites to get information on the Taiwan-based ODMs are www.digitimes.com and www.taiwanhightech.com. Taiwan High Tech used to have a page called "Bring on the orders" that was particularly helpful in finding out who made laptops for whom. Unfortunately, they recently deleted that page (under legal pressure?). The major American computer vendors seem to do their best to hide who they buy their laptops from. They seem to want to maintain the illusion that they make them themselves. The American computer vendors seem to be afraid that the Taiwan-based ODMs will bypass them and sell directly to the U.S. market. As hollowed out as these companies have become with nearly everything from manufacturing to customer support contracted to other companies in other countries, I think their fear is well justified. They are rapidly becoming little more than a brand name and a marketing campaign.

The four biggest Taiwan-based notebook ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Wistron and Asustek (ASUS) in that order, though Wistron and Asustek are nearly tied for third. Other Taiwan-based ODMs include Uniwill, Arima, ECS, Clevo and MSI. Acer is a Taiwan-based integrated computer manufacturer and vendor who makes most of their own notebooks and buys some from Wistron.

My opinions about the quality of various ODMs are largely based on my opinions about the quality of the notebooks that I know they make. For example, Dell buys their notebooks largely from Quanta, Compal and Wistron. Compal makes the Inspiron 8600 and its Latitude equivalent for Dell. My opinion of the 8600 is that the quality is out of control. It's a crapshoot whether or not you get a good one. The trackpoint buttons rarely work, and it has a real heat problem when equipped with an ATI 9600. On the other hand, Compal also makes the Compaq X1000 and HP zt3000. I would consider these notebooks to be average to above average quality.

By comparison, I have a very high opinion of Wistron based on the notebooks I know they make. Wistron makes Dell's small notebooks, which I believe include the Dell 300m and 600m. From user experiences, these notebooks seem to be quite reliable. Wistron also makes the X-series ThinkPads for IBM and at least some of the R-series ThinkPads -- also reliable with good build quality. I have been impressed with the build quality of the Wistron-made Gateway M505. Even the basic AOpen laptops made by Wistron and sold largely to the Chinese clone market seem to be a good value for the money. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Dell and HP/Compaq are planning to switch their 15.4" widescreen notebook production from Compal to Wistron in the 4th quarter of 2004.

I know less about the laptops from Quanta. By process of elimination, I suspect that they make the Inspiron 51XX and 1100 series for Dell. If so, then my opinion of their quality would be low. The Inspiron 51XX series in particular is known to have severe problems with overheating. Quanta also makes laptops for HP and they make the older Gateway models.

It seems to be a very difficult task for notebook manufacturers to build a notebook using a desktop CPU and keep the heat under control. Whoever makes the Gateway M675 seems to have really mastered this issue. Unfortunately, I don't know who that is.

Clevo makes notebooks for Sager, ProStar, Eurocom, Go-L and a number of other vendors. Clevo seems quite good at making reliable notebooks with desktop CPUs, though they have somewhat less of a handle on the heat issue than the M675 manufacturer. They have earned a devoted following among those who want the highest performance notebooks without regard for weight or battery life. I have not been as impressed, however, with what I have read about Clevo's Pentium M notebooks.

I have limited information on Asustek, but from what I have read, their laptops are just as good quality as their motherboards.

ECS, known for high volume/low cost motherboards, seems to have a better reputation for their laptops. They make the VoodooPC m460 and several barebones laptops that are well regarded.

Uniwill makes laptops for Fujitsu/Siemens which are known to have particularly good screen quality. Uniwill also makes the Area-51m for Alienware.

When HP/Compaq bought their laptops from Arima, they apparently developed a reputation for bad quality. Since being dropped by HP, Arima has seen its sales and market share drop like stones. Arima has signed a deal recently, however, that has the potential to shake up the notebook computer industry. They have agreed to supply notebooks directly to Walmart that will be sold under a Walmart brand. This agreement is the first I know of where one of the ODMs has contracted directly with a U.S. retailer, thus bypassing all of the U.S. computer brands and vendors. A sign of things to come?

If anyone has corrections or additions, please send me a private message.

Your welcome. If you are looking for a thin and light Centrino with good graphics, you may want to see my post in this thread.

Thanks BargainSeeker, very informative.

I have been waiting for the ECS G556 for a while now. In many ways it is the perfect notebook. In the US, it will be available through the barebones channel in late February. (It is already available through the OEM channel, see the Voodoo m:460) In the barebones channel a company called Syntax rebrands it. Syntax currently offers the ECS G551, a lower model, as the Syntax AM5100. Do a search for that and you will find many resellers. The yet-to-be-available G556 will be the Syntax AM5600.

Your right, the Dothan is expected to consume more power and produce more heat than the current Pentium M. I have not seen any benchmarks comparing the two CPUs. I would expect it would be comparable to the difference between the P4 and the P4EE.

You seem to be looking for a laptop soon. You know about Intel's delay of the Dothan to the second quarter of 2004, don't you?

If you are really smart, you'd wait for the Sonoma in Q3. With the impending revolution happening so soon, think twice before buying. It is sort of like buying a huge strip of land before the french revolution. Q3 is only about 5 months away. Just think how much you would regret your purchase once an entire new generation of products roll out.By new generation, I don't mean PIII->P4 kind of revolution, but rather 80486->80586 kind of revolution.

When you said that you called an reseller of the ECS G556, you meant you called Syntax? You called the right party. But they are not a reseller. They are morel like a distributor. However, I really resent distributors like Syntax. They do nothing to the barebones machine. They simply transfer the system from ECS to a reseller. Yet for doing nothing they get to rebrand the machine, from whence confusions arise. Resellers for Syntax include accupc.com, among others.

I agree with you deltawalker about purchasing a new laptop in the next 4 to 8 months. Unless you are desparately in need of one and there's no other option (like going into a coma for the duration) it will indeed feel like a huge mistake about a year from now if not sooner. I think this year's changes are going to add up to even more the 486 > 586. We're talking about everything from extreme basics like the bus (PCI Express) and motherboard layout (BTX) to esoterics like memory (DDR2) and even the chips themselves (64 bit computing). Everything is going to change, processors, memory, chipsets, motherboards, memory, busses, I/O, graphics cards, net cards, PC cards, OSs, etc. Its definitely going to be monster and who knows where or to what all this new stuff will lead.

I don't expect things to settle out until Q4/04, perhaps Q1/05, which is currently my target date for a new machine. Hopefully my SAGER 8886 will hang in there until then.

One point I think a lot of people may miss is even if you don't want to change, you like the current stuff (which is fine, at least its been honed for a couple of years and most of the bugs are fixed) because of the big changes, all that stuff is going to be going on sale big time. But not until the new regimen gets going. Then I'd expect to see some serious discounting.

Another issue is that a lot of the big corporation IT managers have been timing their purchasing to all of this, and a lot of their equipment cycles are coming due. They've been delaying purchases and doing repair and maintnance instead of the usual replacement. Times have been tough, budgets tight and in many cases, there's equipment sitting idle as the people that should be working it have been laid-off. When it all hits the fan, its going to be a feeding frenzy the likes of which none of us have ever seen. You're going to see new stuff coming out in droves on a weekly basis, and just when the hardware starts to mellow out, the software is going to go ape taking advantage of all the new hardware capabilities, many of which nobody has the slightest idea of yet.

Great analysis Darquis le Marquis. A lot of the changes are for definitely going to take place. But a lot of controversy have arise from 64-bit computing. Will AMD64 prevail? If it does not do as well as AMD hopes, then most likely AMD will become bankrupt. (AMD is losing a lot of money, just look at these past earning records) For that reason, Intel may include hidden 64-bit instructions on the Dothan and Prescott, which can later be activated, in hopes of pushing AMD out permenantly. Otherwise, Intel may stick with their original plan for introducing 64-bit computing. That is, to use the Itanium core, which isn't even compatible with x86. Intel will most likely produce a consumer-oriented version of the Itanium when the market is ready for it. That is very reasonable as well. Only when both 64bit software and hardware are released can we truly make the transition. At that time, 64-bit computers will be far ahead in terms of speed that even running 32bit apps in emulation mode will not be much slower than running them on current 32bit gear. Following that reason, there is no place for 64bit gear that is 32bit compatible.

I looked into both the Asus M6N and the ECS G556. After comparing both of them for a while, I decided that the G556 is the superior model. First, the obvious: the G556 has the ATI M10P-CSP128 (The P stands for PRO), while the Asus has the M10-CSP64. The not so obvious: the G556 is one of the few notebooks that has a true 32-bit display (24bit RGB and 8bit Alpha channel). The M6N has only a 18bit display. Truly the G556 has a very good LCD. It has a response time of 25ms, which is good enough for me. I have no idea about the Asus though. The design of the G556 is very nice also. It has an aluminum shell, like the Apple PowerBooks. (Not suprisingly, since ECS used to make Apple notebooks). Lastly, the G556 is 1inch thick and weighs 5lbs. The weight and height are not important factors, but is a nice added bonus.

To clarify the ATI Mobility Radeon 9600: Without taking into account the OpenGL version and the shared memory version, there are three variants: the 9600, the 9600 Pro, and the 9600 Pro Turbo. Then there are two choices for RAM, 64mb and 128mb, for a total of 5 combinations. (the Pro Turbo can only have 128mb ram). The Ram is simply that, it does not change the core or the driver. The two marked variants, the Pro and the Pro turbo, have higher core/memory clock speeds than the regular variant, while all other specs are the same. The regular variant is marked as the M10-CSP64, while the Pro and the Pro Turbo are the M10P-CSP64/128. There is no way to tell the Pro turbo from the pro 128MB by looking at the model number.

The cheapest way to purchase the G556 is to buy a barebones and install the HD, memory, and cpu yourself. It will be released by Syntax in a month or so, and will be sold by many existing Syntax barebones resellers, such as accupc.com. But if money is no object for you, why not purchase the G556 from an OEM? Voodoo offers the G556 as the M:460, starting at $3000.