[davidovitch]

There are modern alternative systems with an open firmware stack, for example the Talos II running Power9. Granted, it is not available as a cheap, slick and slim power efficient laptop, but it is real, only twice as expensive and very capable. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9

See performance benchmarks incomparison with AMD/Intel at: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-t... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=power9-t...

[smcl]

There's also the Blackbird which is even more affordable - https://raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html. It's still sadly more than I could justify spending - for my non-portable needs I use a ~5 year old Intel NUC which was cheap as chips and still going strong. But if that ever changes a Talos POWER-based system is at top of my list.

The Talos guys pop up in the comments on HN now and then and they're very pleasant.

[znpy]

> https://raptorcs.com/content/BK1B01/intro.html

That motherboard + cpu bundle costs $1732 (plus shipping, I guess).

I mean... Okay, it's super cool, but... I doubt that most people can affort that.

[smcl]

What I was saying was it’s more affordable than the Talos II mentioned earlier in this thread. I agree that it’s not exactly cheap, but I don’t think it’s for everyone.