Laptops made by Nan Tan, Kapok, and Clevo
Quick Links: Clevo Service Manuals | List of brands that sold Nan Tan/Kapok/Clevo laptops
Nan Tan, Kapok, and Clevo are all the same company. The history of when each name was used is confusing and unclear, but here's the general history:
Company History
Nan Tan Computer (NTC) was founded in 1983, and for years only manufactured keyboards. In 1989, they set up a laptop division and introduced their first products in 1990. Nan Tan was an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM), meaning that they would sell their laptops to other companies rather than direct-to-consumer. These companies (or distributors/resellers) would then put their own brand on the laptops and sell them under their own model number. As such, you'll basically never see a laptop branded as Nan Tan, Kapok, or Clevo. You will often see complete generics though - ones with no branding at all.
In 1993, Nan Tan established Kapok as a separate division of their company. For the next few years, both Nan Tan and the Kapok division produced separate lines of laptops. In 1997, Nan Tan Computer changed their name to Clevo, and in 1999 they re-absorbed Kapok into Clevo, unifying the brand under one name.
The company (which we'll just call Clevo from here-on) has had a long-time focus in making desktop replacement and gaming laptops. They're responsible for many of the craziest, highest end brick-sized laptops made throughout the past 25 years. Perhaps their most ridiculous was the x7200, which used LGA 1366 desktop Core i7 processors, and could have two NVIDIA Fermi GPUs running in SLI, all in a massive laptop with a 17-inch screen - and that's just one of many. They do make more reasonable products, but the gaming products are what they're best known for.
Clevo has made a lot, and I mean a lot of laptops. It will probably take years for me to document them all. For now, I'm placing 2005 as my cutoff, anything newer will be documented after all models 2005 and earlier are done.
Identifying a Nan Tan/Kapok/Clevo
A Nan Tan-era laptop can easily be identified by the FCC ID on the bottom, which will start with "FMA" (their company grantee code). The same is true for Kapok-era laptops, which will have an FCC ID starting in "L4P". Clevo-era stuff can be trickier. Models made in the last 15 years or so (maybe earlier) have "CLEVO CO" written in small print on the bottom label, so those are easy. Earlier stuff doesn't though. These can usually still be identified by their labels, which will say "Notebook Computer" in a very distinctive font. In fact, nearly every Nan Tan/Kapok/Clevo laptop has "Notebook Computer" written on that label (some others say "Laptop Computer" or "Multimedia Notebook Computer").
Much of the information on the Nan Tan era was sourced (with permission) from Creepingnet, who has done a lot of research on the company. Go check out his site!
The sections for each brand below have color-coded backgrounds.
