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A Million-Dollar Laptop Created
aluminumangel writes "For those of you who don't know what to do with all your money, why not a one million-dollar laptop from the U.K-based company Luvaglio? With 128GB of solid state disk space, Blu-ray, and a detachable rare diamond that acts like a power button and a security key."
But does it run Linux?
128 GB of solid-state storage isn't that expensive. All you have to do is get a bunch of 1 GB microSD chips and put them in a big fat RAID, totaling under $2,000. So what's the practical use of this product, apart from conspicuous consumption?
... if they had an extremely rare diamond that was used as a battery.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
the website referenced in the story is /.ed Maybe they should invest in a million dollar laptop to run the site from.
Anyway, this is Hedonism for the richest. There is no reason to have a million dollar laptop today, when the most expensive laptops don't go over 10K. The fact that there are dimonds on this thing just show that this is not about a laptop, this is about another pointless status symbol, like an adopted kid from Africa for some US celebrities.
You can't handle the truth.
That's the benefit of such a thing...it's advertised as a laptop with an attached diamond instead of a rare diamond that comes with a laptop. This whole thing is probably an accounting scam to let you buy an expensive diamond, but reap depreciation benefits (ie tax benefits) because in a technical sense you bought a "$1MM laptop." This idea is as flawed as that diamond probably isn't :-)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Actually, it is gizmag's server that can't take it. Luvaglio's site is probably quite a light load on a webserver, considering that it consists of just two pages - a homepage that says "By Appointment Only," and a page with contact info. No pics, no specs, not even a product announcement. Are we supposed to take these people seriously?
Mmmm... an Ivory keyboard
True enough. But not all efforts are equally efficient. While the actual spending of money cannot -- itself -- waste anything, it can induce wasteful behavior. For example, suppose I spend $1000 hiring someone to stand on their head. By my spending, I caused one person to waste two person-days' worth of effort.
That said, I agree with you: this insane laptop is a great way to keep the wealth moving around. Its construction consumed about $2000 worth of actual effort, yet it liberates a million dollars from a concentration (i.e. from a rich person) to be spread around again.
Ditto with all luxury objects, for that matter. The higher the markup (i.e. the greater the difference between price and the effort to produce it), the more efficiently it dilutes wealth concentrations. Servants, meanwhile, are at the opposite end of the efficiency spectrum: low price but large number of person-hours consumed.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I Wouldn't want it, even if it were much cheaper and came without that diamond.
Here's what I'd expect from the manufacturer of a laptop at the upper end of the price scale:
- a bit more of a website than just a "contact us" form. For example, Spec sheets, driver downloads for every OS that can run on it, a support area.
and here's what i'd expect from a laptop that is THAT HIGH above the upper end of the price scale:
- full warranty replacement within 2 hours, 7 days a week, all around the world, with no extra fees.
- full toll-free phone support, 7 days a week, all around the world, with no extra fees.
- no matter what broke, the full laptop gets replaced, but with your data copied over. Even in case of destruction by fire etc (data recovery service included in maintenance contract)