Ever tried repairing a laptop? This is almost impossible for laypersons today with almost all devices. Anyone who comes up with the idea of prying open their notebook to remove the ventilation, for example, will quickly curse. It’s extremely fiddly. With a special screwdriver, no matter how narrow, you can hardly get the components apart. There are only a few screws left, almost everything is glued. And if you do find a micro screw, it will surely fall on the floor and be gone, never to be seen again.
It’s no wonder that the inner workings of a laptop are so cramped: today’s devices are supposed to perform at their best. They should be fast, have sufficient RAM, a good battery and quiet fans – and still be slim and as light as possible. The solution is that the components are getting smaller and smaller and are installed in less and less space. Very few people are interested in what it looks like inside, i.e. whether a laptop can be repaired. The devices would be so much more durable and therefore more sustainable.
There are a few founders who try their hand at such repairable products and are successful – albeit in a niche. One of them is Lukas Hartmann from Berlin, founder of the start-up MNT. The company with around ten employees developed the first German open source laptop. Open source is known to many, especially from the software sector. This refers to open source programs that may be copied, modified, improved and passed on. All major IT companies from Amazon to Microsoft now use such open source codes.
MNT now practically transfers this principle to hardware. The open-source laptop “MNT Reform” is designed in such a way that users can repair it themselves: every part of the device can be replaced. To this end, the company publishes all the assembly instructions and the complete design files so that, for example, individual spare parts can also be reprinted in a 3D printer. A “right to repair“, which does not yet exist in Germany for laptops, was implemented in this way right from the start, the company emphasizes.
The “MNT Reform” is designed so that you can repair it yourself.
(Photo: MNT)
“In view of increasingly compact devices that cannot be repaired, I asked myself where the computer has gone as a neutral tool,” Hartmann explains his idea. It cannot be that such a laptop is subject to “complete commercial exploitation” and that one cannot freely decide which services of the provider one wants to use – and which ones not.
Hartmann studied business communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin. When he met industrial designer Ana Dantas in 2015, they started a project together with the goal: to create a laptop that puts people back in full control of the device. Hartmann still had money left over from his time at various web start-ups such as the social network Akiaki. “I invested that in experiments and prototypes.”
A 1991 Apple Powerbook.
(Photo: Apple)
They were inspired by computers from the 1980s and 1990s, such as those from Commodore, the Sinclair ZX 81 and Apple’s Powerbook. “The devices were designed to be very functional,” says Hartmann. “And they gave themselves a lot of space. We also wanted to build such an obvious device that you just don’t need enlargers and special equipment to screw it on.”
Six to nine months waiting time
In 2020 the first German open source laptop came onto the market, also financed by a crowdfunding campaign. The first 500 or so laptops have now been sold, but if you still want a good 1300 expensive device, you have to wait six to nine months. Only then will the company have all the parts together again, because MNT is also struggling with the chip crisis.
The do-it-yourself kit, with which you can screw the laptop together yourself, is a little cheaper. And according to Hartmann, it sells even better than the finished device. “It’s a bit like Ikea furniture,” he says. You don’t need any special tools, just a screwdriver and a bit of patience. Whoever sticks it out to the end understands how a computer works. Of course, open source software also runs on the open source laptop. Namely Debian Linux, web browsers such as Firefox and Chromium, the office software Libre Office and the free Photoshop alternative Gimp are also preinstalled.
The laptops are mainly bought by open source experts, says Hartmann, but also by less technically savvy people and users who need security, for whom it is important that no part of the device can be monitored. Universities also use the laptops to show their computer science students what a computer looks like.
Hartmann sees great potential for this type of consumer electronics, but they don’t want to “grow into the new Apple”. However, the company is set to continue growing, currently with the new product, the MNT Pocket Reform, a small, only 7-inch open-source laptop. In the basic version with a housing made of recycled PLA, it should cost around 700 euros.
The MNT laptops are one of the few open hardware products aimed directly at consumers. More common are repairable and reproducible technologies for industry. The platform provides some of these projects Prototype Fund Hardware which is supported by the Ministry of Research. Instructions for building a CO₂ measuring device or decentralized solar systems are listed, for example. One shows that there is great savings potential in this area EU study. She even speaks of “the next revolution” when it comes to open-source hardware.