Your Brand Name Laptop Was Made by Another Company

It is pretty common knowledge that brand name computers all use parts (motherboards by Asus, hard drives by Toshiba, RAM by HNIX, etc.) not made by the company whose name is inscribed on the casing, but few people realize that all major laptops originate out of several major factories. Taiwanese companies Quanta and Compal make up more than half of all notebooks sold worldwide. Quanta Computer Inc. is the second largest manufacturer and has a client list that includes Apple, Acer, HP, Lenovo, Dell, and more. Compal Electronics Corp. surged ahead of its rival this year, reporting sales records, and also supplies wares to many of Quanta’s patrons.

Most brand name corporations - especially those selling higher end laptops like Apple and Alienware - do not want consumers to know that they merely design their products, not manufacture them; thus, Apple is sincere with its “designed in California” labels, which fail to mention that their notebooks are from the same factories as many other brands. However, this outsourcing tactic has been going on since the beginning and should not be an indication of dishonesty. Such secrecy is mostly for marketing and public image perceptions. After all, just because Quanta made the MacBook Air, it does not mean that a $500 Lenovo is equivalent in quality since the manufacturer must adhere to each client’s specific demands and price ranges. Asus is one of only a few brands that sell laptops directly instead of sourcing them through an OEM supplier.

For curiosity’s sake, to find the true origins of your laptop, Hell Labs has these tips under Linux:

* Check system, base board or chassis manufacturer DMI data with dmidecode. For instance, a Positivo V44 shows “Manufacturer: CLEVO Co.” and “Product Name: M550SE/M660SE”. But Compal-made HPs can have this marked as “Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard”.
* See PCI subsystem vendor IDs with lspci -vv. The aforementioned Positivo machine shows “CLEVO/KAPOK Computer”. A Positivo D35 shows “Uniwill Computer Corp”. The HPs and Acers I examined list subdevices as their own.
* See the vendor ID in the first three octets of the ethernet interface MAC address. Some HP machines have “00:16:D4″ which means Compal Communications. An Acer Aspire 3620 has a Wistron ID in its ethernet interface.

Source: Digitimes