$150 Linux Laptop for the Masses

Xemu writes "Inspired by Negroponte's laptop for children, the Swedish company Medison is now taking orders for their US$150 Linux laptop, the Medison Celebrity. The laptop is a 1.5 GHz Celeron M 370 with 14 inch screen, wireless network and it comes with Fedora Red Hat pre-installed." Update 2035 GMT by SM: As many readers have pointed out, the more you dig into the details of this company the more fishy it starts to seem. I would suggest any potential buyers be wary on this one.

Comments

It may be fraud

[amorsen]

There is a lot of speculation currently about whether this is fraud. They may be intending to run away with the money and not send out any laptops.

Re:It may be fraud

[WrongMonkey]

Now that you mention it, one thing that should set off the fraud alarm is the 4-6 weeks delivery time. That's a eon in terms of modern service, but a long enough time to collect a lot of orders before anyone expects to receive their product.

Re:It may be fraud

[Njovich]

The privacy policy is a copy of Apples privacy policy with their name and some filler added.

http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/
vs
http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/legal/privacy/

(for instance, check the 'kids' sections)

Re:Smells fishy...

[RAMMS EIN]

Damn. It sounded so good.

Come to think of it, maybe that should have been the first warning.

take this off slashdot

[b4thyme]

shouldn't this be taken off of slashdot to reduce free advertising for a potential scam?

Working on talking to them live

[CaptainTux]

I just sent an email to their people asking if they would be willing to do a live interview to clear some of the fraud questions up. We'll see how it goes I suppose. If they agree, I will get the interview up and posted on YouTube and UStream asap.

Re:Smells fishy...

[jmorris42]

> The thing is, it didn't sound SO good as to be absolutely implausible...

Yes it did. I clinked to thier website and read the spec and instantly posted Scam.

Negroponte & co can't hit $150 selling much simpler machines by the million lot and as a non-profit operation to boot. This machine is supposed to have a 14" TFT HD res screen vs the oddball cheap screen on the OLPC. This machine has both a hard drive and DVD drive while the OLPC has a dinky flash drive. The OLPC is coming out of the most lowball Chinese factory in the contract manufacturing business so there are NO more efficiencies to wring out of the price to give these unknown guys a way to offer more for less.

Do the math people. When somebody offers you a new laptop for less than the display and drives cost when delivered by the shipping container while they give every indication of being a showstring operation that can't build a decent webpage or do their own e-commerce it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Scam.

Like all good scams though, it preys upon a weakness in the victim. They might be crooks but they are good con artists. FAQ question #1 was where a good percentage of /. people started WANTING TO BELIEVE so much their common sense switched off.

"#1. Q: Why is the laptop much cheaper than other laptops?
A: We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops."

And you guys were all like; "Yea, everyone should be able to afford a laptop man, like it's a Right or something. The Man is just ripping us off to feed insane Corporate salaries and fat cat shareholders. These are just some hoopy froods sticking it to the System!"