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"World's Cheapest Laptop" Available in Bulk Only
BobB writes to tell us that what one company is calling the "world's cheapest laptop" is now available at the price of $130. Unfortunately if you want to buy one you will also need to convince 99 of your closest friends to go in on an order with you since you cannot buy in less than units of 100. We have covered several "cheap laptops" in the past and many have turned out to be fraudulent, so especially with a large up-front cost, buyer beware. "The Impulse NPX-9000 laptop has a 7-inch screen and comes with the Linux OS. It has a 400MHz processor, 128M bytes of RAM, 1G byte of flash storage and an optional wireless networking dongle. It includes office productivity software, a Web browser and multimedia software."
...who's in?
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
With specs like that. It's pretty much useless.
I'm just an anonymous coward and I don't have 99 friends.
For the Beowulf crowd... just imagine.....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Posting this with my 600MHz laptop running KDE 3 1/2 (Kubuntu 8.04) and have never had any complaints about speed. 128MB, though ...
Till it's actually on the market. Then we'll know if it's worth anything.
If so, chat me up here:
http://sea-cat.info/scc.html
I tested the 7 inch screen Eee PC when it first came out and a screen that size is pretty much useless when it comes to internet use of serious document preparation.
The article doesn't mention a VGA port but at that price I'd be amazed if it has one.
Still, I suppose any computer, even if it does give you eyestrain, is better than none.
I wonder when this race to the bottom will result in a cheap laptop with a text only display.
Seriously. Just click around on that website. Looks like China is about to unleash a crapload of cheap laptops. I said it back when the EEEPC refocused on the $400-$600 market, that at those prices Linux was going to get replaced with XP and I was mostly right. But I also said somebody would remember the hugh interest when Asus mentioned a $200 pricepoint and that somebody would fill it. Consider it filled.
Most of these are very poorly thought out designs, especially today's link. Most will fail in the marketplace, only a few will even get into mass retail channels as even the morons at Best Buy can smell the fail. But all it takes is for ONE to succeed and that will probably happen. When that happens everything changes.
Democrat delenda est
AND a dodgy offer.
It's all hype and no substance.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Assuming that the laptop is indeed worth it, I suppose this will be the type of product that resellers will be interested in. They might buy a bunch in bulk in terms of making a profit by reselling at a markup, possibly at $150.
Keep in mind that developing countries benefit from this moreso than developed countries. You have no need for cheap laptops, but the world does. While the 7" screen is definitely a pitfall in my opinion, I suppose that it would serve a purpose. Also, while cheaper than OLPC, I feel as if this might be geared more towards young adults with a "serious" computer need rather than the Sugar OS, which is a bit childish in my opinion.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
As this liliputing article points out, this is a rebrand of a common product (razorbook, elonex one, etc.).
The linux distribution is, well, unknown, and the specs are less than impressive; basically it's a MIPS32 CPU, PDA rather than laptop range. Liliputing also has a $99 laptop on their homepage right now, with even less impressive specs.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
and while it costs a bit more it has the virtue of being a working phone. while the screen size is nice the rest of it's trash, plain and simple.
Couldn't you get a used laptop that beats those specs for $130? Granted, you would almost certainly need to buy a new battery for said used laptop, but nonetheless I don't see the advantage of this system.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I bought the 701 eee PC, so I'm about full on 7" laptops with mediocre resolution. The next one I buy will either be a slight bit larger vertically or have better resolution. If I hadn't already got the 701, I'd be sorely tempted by the 901 or 1000, especially with their supposed 6+ hours battery life.
I got the large battery for the 701 and it almost lasts 4 hours if I'm just reading with the backlight turned down. If I could buy a spare 6 cell battery or an even larger capacity battery, I'd be mostly happy. The resolution is sufficent for reading(especially when held sideways with the window rotated), it's just the lack of vertical resolution that makes browsing and remoting a scrolling pain.
It's amazing what kind of impact the OLPC project is having. From a business standpoint, the project does not seem to be doing very well. However, from a humanitarian point of view, (and the name of the project at least implies that their mission is ostensibly humanitarian), it is being amazingly successful, having created and brought heavy competition into the cheap laptop business. Even if OLPC were to cease to exist, it very well might be possible that every child will have one laptop.
I was just looking at the minimum specs for running Flash version 9 http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/systemreqs/ which apparently needs a P2-450 to run. I'm curious if this 400 MHz CPU would be fast enough for smooth playability? Lack of Flash support would eliminate a good chunk of uses for this thing.
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
I just got a P3 laptop for free at a rummage sale cuz the hard drive was broken (but I had a spare one). This model goes for far under $100 on ebay so let's compare. 400MHz processor vs 850 MHz processor. 128 vs 128 of ram. 1GB of storage compared to 20GB. 7 inch screen vs 14. And a who knows but probably less AH batter vs a 2.2AH battery (you can order a 4-6+ AH one on ebay for it though). Oh and mine came with ME on it so I reinstalled that and it boots from off in about 15 seconds and shuts down in just under 5 seconds. Yep, mine's faster. This trend of ultra cheap but slower than hell laptops is a joke. If you want some cheap, slow piece of crap that can surf the web and type documents, just buy a used laptop on ebay for even cheaper.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I do not understand this obsession with cheap crap on Slashdot recently... This $130 "laptop" is a fine example. Seriously, I'm lost... why would anyone consider buying such thing?
At around $100, a laptop becomes an impulse buy for many people. Need a disposable machine you can buy for an overseas vacation? Need something you can give the kids where you don't have to worry if it gets lost or trashed? Need a laptop you can buy from a vending machine? How about handing out free laptops that tie you into some monthly subscription service? All of these become possible at a $100 price point.
Despite the best efforts of Microsoft, Linux is going to dominate the low end of laptop computing within three years. Microsoft will have to give away Windows in order to compete, and that ain't gonna happen. If the low-end manufacturers can standardize on a particular Linux distro/interface, the revolution will happen that much faster. Then, once everyone is used to operating these cut-rate machines, some enterprising vendors will need only package "deluxe" versions of the same Linux distro along with support for pricier laptops, and Windows will start to see some serious market erosion.
Just go to eBay, and buy a much older generation ultralight laptop, the kind that used to cost $2,000. You will pretty readily find one with better specs than that for quite cheap, possibly under $100. Replace the hard drive with a flash card. Using a adapter you can get for just a few bucks, also on eBay, you can plug a compact flash card into a 2.5" IDE drive cable as found on the laptop.
Ok, you need a distro that will distribute writes on the flash card, but I bet you can work it out.
In fact, I have often wondered if we couldn't duplicate the cheap-laptops-for-kids efforts with free, donated laptops into which you slot a pre-prepared IDE interface compact flash card with linux on it.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
You're having sub-notebook problems, /shit_cover_version
And I feel bad for son,
I got 99 problems,
But a laptop aint one.
Now that the OLPC is just another laptop, what's to stop developing countries just buying a few thousand of these machines?
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/206720976/7_mini_laptop.html
$90-$180 FOB Shanghai, QTY 500. Runs Linux or Windows CE.
Looks like they have variants of this from 7" to 12.1", which is why the range of prices.
I got 99 friends and bitches ain't one of them.
If this thing's legit and half decent, it's probably not gonna be any more expensive than whatever deal Dell/Mac give schools, so it may be worth picking up. I'm thinking of private/parochial schools that don't have gov't contracts, but maybe even elementary schools if you throw sugar/a sugar like interface 'cause it may be friendlier to kids than a full size (heavy) laptop.
open source modern art: laser taggi
I say load up windows 95 on the thing and have a screaming machine for the kiddies, put the load image on a flash drive and when the kiddies mess up their laptop you can just flash it back to factory default.
Or load it up with some sorta Nintendo DS Emulator or PSP emulator and have a kick ass portable console.
Or load Mame on it and play a bazillion games on your new portable gaming system!!!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
You pay $130 and when you get ten of your friends to pay $130 they send you a laptop. It's called a pyramid scheme.
End Sarcasm
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
If my wife could buy a class set of 30 (maybe a few extras), she'd be more than happy to have these for her 6th grade students. A couple of candy bar sales would do it. All they need them for is simple research on the web and basic word processing. Anything else (audio, able to show video, etc) is great, but not needed. And at $130, when one is lost (and technology in student hands always dies or gets stolen), she won't have to call in the national guard.
Crappy machines? Yes! Almost a plus in this case. So they fit a need. My guess is she's no the only with the need.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
How about this: If we were to buy 100 Asus eeePCs, we could probably get a good price, and we know those are powerful enough to be useful.
Would you rather spend $250 on something you can actually do work on or $130 on something that won't be of any use?
I mean, if you're gonna talk about buying 100 units, you can probably get a sweet price. Costco does it all the time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you have some time, and some money to invest... Say $13,000. You could buy them, sell them on ebay or Amazon for $185 a piece and make a cool $5,000 for yourself.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why is this EXACTLY like the XO laptop?
Linux OS... Check
Exact Hardware Specs... Check
Insanely small screen... Check
Distributed in 100s... Check
So... is this a model number for the XO laptop? It is distributed in 100's because it is meant for schools...
I say this article wants attention that has already been reported...
I know it's a little more expensive, but I'm holding out for one of these.
Does nobody here understand how commerce works? These are wholesale lots. (As are all the things sold on Alibaba.) This is not a $130 laptop. $250 is probably a better guess at the retail price.
I think enough people prefer new that the ebay argument won't actually hold much merit for the intended market.
Not that I don't agree that the features seem lacking, but I really see the market companies are aiming these things at as a latent market that will continue to wait for the right combination of both features and price. It'll happen, it just might not happen today.
Quack, quack.
It's barely worth $99. Think about it. The wireless is optional so you'll have to pay extra for it to be useful at all. Then there's the 7" screen which most won't be able to see. With 128MB, you'll have to update just to be able to visit most websites and most won't look right or work right as it is configured anyways. With 1 GB of storage, you won't be able to download much at all before you have to load onto another machine. Hell, my phone has 4GB!
All in all, some company bought out a lot of old useless parts, slapped them together, and is looking to pass them on to some sucker who will in turn have to pass them on to even more suckers. As configured, the only thing this computer would be good for is as a portable e-book and/or web page reader - IF you have really good eyes.
If someone does buy 100 of them, I'll give ya $50 for one though. I collect old useless computers as part of my collection.
I believe you're right; and further, I think this will seriously endanger the One Laptop Per Child project. They were way out in front, and maintain a slight advantage thanks to some of their tech (screen, wifi, battery life, ruggedness) -- but it just takes one manufacturer to not be braindead to fill the market for low-power, high-portable, low-price, high-performance laptops.
Of course, it's possible that the best thing to fulfill OLPC's goal is for this exact thing to happen.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Actually you can buy the same ones from Bestlink. They give bulk discounts too, but you don't have to buy in bulk from them.
The manufacturer of these notebooks keeps slapping on different labels, but they're all pretty much the same, except for some minor aesthetic and firmware differences.
I've compared one of them (from yet another reseller, with yet another unknown brand slapped on the back) to my EeePC 701 and here's what I found:
Pros:
- Cheaper then the Eee
- Smaller and lighter, even when compared with the 701
- Screen is very bright, even with the Eee at its brightest, the el cheapo is still brighter, see picture)
Cons:
- No onboard wlan although it comes with a usb wlan device
- 400MHz mipsel as opposed to a 600 or 900MHz IA32 CPU in the Eee's
- No frozen bubble (???)
This is a 400 MHz MIPS + 128MB of memory. The PSP is a 333 MHz MIPS + 64MB of memory (Slim variant) + GPU. If the laptop's GPU can handle it, someone needs to reverse-engineer PSP games to run on this (preferably via a Wine-style compatibility layer) and those laptops are an instant sell. It wouldn't be legal, but this would immensely boost value nonetheless, and the Chinese are not exactly known for always abiding with the copyright law.
Another question is the battery life. The PSP has similar specs and it sustains about 4 h of intensive use on a rather wimpy 1200 mAh battery, so it should be very good provided that they supplied a decent battery. Does anyone have battery life specs for this thing? There's nothing about this in TFA or the ordering page...
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/27/keepin-it-real-fake-part-cxxvi-jointechs-99-jl7100-rips-eee/
I picked up my Everex laptop for $300 after shipping. It's not exactly $130, but you don't have to buy 100 of them either.
The battery life sucks, but you can pick up another battery for it pretty cheap.
It's exactly what I wanted a cheap laptop that will run Linux and if it gets lost, broken, or stolen I won't be out 1k.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Apple can get OS/X to run on these low power machine as proven by the IPhone.
Just wait for the iNetbook. It will be sexy an little bit more expensive than the lesser NetBooks but will work with ITunes.
The new Itunes store will offer a large selection of software that all you have to do is point and click to download.
It will of course tether with your IPhone and will have the option to use you IPod as mass storage.
The EeePC and other netbooks will become the Rios of netbooks.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Despite the best efforts of Microsoft, Linux is going to dominate the low end of laptop computing within three years. Microsoft will have to give away Windows in order to compete, and that ain't gonna happen.
They already nearly give Windows away in developing countries in order to try to sustain their market dominance in the face of competition from Linux. And they admit that piracy isn't a problem because it gets developing countries hooked on their products. Why wouldn't they give Windows away to keep from losing this market as well? They can see the writing on the wall as well as we can that this is a great opportunity for Linux to break out and will pretty much do anything to stop that.
This is the kind of laptop that would run Puppy Linux perfectly. This distro is specifically designed to run on older/slower hardware, so should be nice here.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
You sir, have hit the proverbial nail on the head: the ultracheap portables are a game changer! Not only did they force ol' Bill to keep supporting Windows XP, in spite of Microsoft's all-out, balls-to-the-walls attempt at killing it off. No, that's not the only "inconvenience". These inexpensive little buggers are going to put Microsoft in front of the following dilemma:
1. Let Linux flood the world market, exposing tens of millions (potentially hundreds of millions) of users to a viable alternative to Windows, finally showing that yes, the "King" is indeed naked.
or
2. Offer Windows XP to OEMs for a song, or even for nothing. MS might opt for this solution. Heck, they got gobs of money, they could even pay the OEMs to have Windows XP included with every laptop.
The latter presents a small issue: what will the Lenovos, HPs and Dells of the world say about this? Probably not very pleased, I guess. And also, (at least some of) the users of these computers will realize that they actually have the right to install Windows XP onto their desktop computer, if they uninstalled it from their portable. Which means, less sales of Vista for MS. And MS doesn't necessarily care, at the end of the day, how many people use (or like, for that matter) their software, only how many pay for it, and free copies of Windows XP in the wild don't translate to much cash at all, methinks.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
99 cheap-ass laptops... Take one down, pass it around... 99 cheap-ass laptops on the wall!
(I hope that I'm not infringing on the copyright of some RIAA-member label by posting these words.)
Reconsider the end of Microsoft for a minute.
Microsoft doesn't want to go scraping the bottom of the price barrel. In many ways, devices like this (real or otherwise) actually improve their bottom line. How? Why?
1. There's no money to be made down there. Moreover Microsoft's OS becomes the Premium OS for your "fancier, but cheaper than a Mac" computer.
2. Waaay down in the bottom of the ultra-low-priced laptop the OS is perceived as cheap. That's totally different than what Microsoft is after.
3. Microsoft has no reason to rush. When OEM's are selling enough, they'll start a project and get all the OEM's off Linux once their slim OS is ready-enough.
4. Market share "speeds and feeds" won't make Linux switchers. Great projects do. Just ask apple how long they've been grinding away at the "switch" campaign. It's taken *years* of OSX to make a dent, not advertising.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Costco is for? You may need a forklift for the box, but think of the deal you're getting!
I wonder if it runs the PowerPC processor as it ships as 400Mhz.
There is a "all-in-one" chip/CPU which is used for 2 watt (yes,you read right) ultra mini PC/device which does whole storage on Amazon Cloud.
The "CPU" has 3D/2D capability, sound capability and actual CPU part on single chip.Freescales MPC5121e mobileGT processor,(400 MHz) which claims to do 800MIPS.
The company producing it and their idea of PR almost wasted it. (Spam web 2.0 to get free etc.), its name is "CherryPal Cloud".
People dropping support to PPC, especially Linux distros because Apple moved to Intel should wake up. If we speak about low power CPUs, FreeScale backed by IBM is a very serious factor.
I'd like to see Microsoft give away XP when they take it out of service. It'd be nice of them to open (even if just partially) the source for it and give it away. Maybe stick with the shared sorce type program that they have and just let it loose so that people can continue to use it, patch it, etc...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
that what computer labs are for? The old desktops that *most* schools have can still run anything that these things could. (Granted, I'm assuming that the school where your wife works has computers already).
.
The geek will blow a C-note on a fantasy that comes with a thirty-second warranty - but there is an old saying that the poor can't afford to be cheap.
This has been the death knell for OEM Linux at Walmart.
The geek hype machine goes into overdrive every time something like gOS hits the shelves - but after the dust settles - the ratio of Windows to Linux product at Walmart remains 50 to 1.
It does exist. The Nokia tablets (n800/810) run Flash.
If you give Adobe enough money, they'll port Flash to your device's arch. Doesn't mean you'll be able to download and run it on a random box you're running Linux on for fun though.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
> This has been the death knell for OEM Linux at Walmart.
Only because it was done poorly. I gave the Mrs. an EEEPC 900, thus I have played around with one enough to say one thing about them: It works.
And that changes everything. It means that Linux for the masses can be done. ASUS and Xandros obviously busted their asses to pull it off, but it proves it can be done. And Moore's Law is bringing the price of the required hardware lower and lower so it is only a matter of time now.
Apple and Microsoft can't compete in the The geek will blow a C-note on a fantasy that comes with a
> thirty-second warranty...
The ASUS offering comes with a 1 year warranty, same as most other midrange consumer electronics. But you are correct, warranty coverage is important which is why the winner in the next stage, the $300 market, will probabaly be one which offers at least a 90-180 day warranty. By the time the sweet spot gets to $99-$149 a basic ninety day warranty will probably be just fine.
Democrat delenda est
It's easily adjusted w/ an adapter. In the end, I concur. There should be a bigger push to include DVI for future compatibility issues.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
"7 inch screen vs 14." Well, you may not have realized that smaller is more expensive when it comes to Laptops. The EEE was the first one to have broken this trend. My Sony 10" Laptop was US$ 1500 4 years ago and it was a bargain! You prefer an 14" screen? Fine, but there are people that prefer a small device, maybe as their 2nd or 3rd computer, that they can easily carry around. So easily that you can throw it in your handbag without the need for another laptop carry bag. "1GB of storage compared to 20GB." Again, you are comparing the wrong things. You compare a SDD vs. HDD. Do you know what is the most likely part in your laptop that will break?
The average US consumer might not think much of theese laptops that are comparable to junk-ware. I live in Mexico at the moment. Several of my relatives are teachers or have kids that go to schools. ...schools that are starving for technolgy. In my area the average public Elementary has 200 students and the computer lab,(if it has one) consists of a maximum of 10 computers for the students. Teachers have A computer in the classroom for office purposes.
Private Schools in Mexico are good and many, but out of reach for most.
Technology like this is a great solution for devolping nations.
I've always wondered why (perhaps even as a hobby project), no ones tried creating a notebook of early 90's spec (ie 386 Notebook/68k Mac/Amiga). Surely by now the parts are very cheap and low voltage (most now come in embedded varieties). Displays for the kind of resolution this class of machine requires is very low (640x480 8-bit), and a considerable amount of software is available. Would make an interesting little toy.
...one thing comes to mind.
Try again and come up with something that meets the quality levels of used Thinkpads. Comparable performance and cost, and they aren't full of cut-rate hardware.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I do not understand this obsession with cheap crap on Slashdot recently... This $130 "laptop" is a fine example. Seriously, I'm lost... why would anyone consider buying such thing?
This question has been asked before and I'm sure it will be asked again. But you know the answers, as do the millions of people who are excited about these devices. Anybody with a scrap of imagination can work it out; you're just asking because you feel like making a fuss over something which you have decided doesn't fit with who you are.
-FL
Supposedly the founders of the OLPC project would be just as happy if this happened - that the XO laptop is just the method they took, but if somebody else has a better plan, more power to them...
I remember my father bringing home one of the early consumer hand-held calculators. It took a stack of triple A cells and it came with a wall socket adapter. It cost a couple hundred dollars. The whole family was very impressed and my father looked like a kid with a shiny new wagon. Heck, he can't have been more than twenty-something at the time. Go Dad!
The public went bananas for small calculators. They were the 'It' machine of the day. The digital watch or the Walkman. Everybody had to have one, and the big electronics companies all went crazy, because they thought they were going to make a mint. They were wrong. Tons of competition drove prices down and innovations up, (and according to the three minutes of internet research I just did) it was tough to make a lot of profit on calculators. Today, as we all know, hand-held calculators are basically given away for free. The sort of thing you dig through the house junk drawer when you lose the one you normally use. As it should be.
I don't know how the wrist-watch craze went, and even though Sony did gangbusters with their Walkman, you can get a portable music player for, (ahem) a song these days. Now its time for the portable computer to go through this process. --The difference now is that when all those other devices came along, I responded with, "Yeah. That's a good idea! I wonder why I didn't care at all before now?" (Of course, it all had to do with my age and where I was in life at the time.) Today it's different. I've been wanting a light, small, affordable portable computer for years. I even have a used one from the late 90's that I garnered from eBay and which I use every other day. --I was using it only half an hour ago to write some stuff while away from the desktop PC. That thing was well over a thousand dollars new, and it's an under-powered, hinge-cracked piece of gosa on its last legs. I've literally used it to death, and I'll be needing to replace it shortly.
The only question I have is this. . . Will I replace it with another old used machine from ten years ago or with one of these new ones? It's a real question. The new ones are flashy and slick and powerful, but they are missing the one feature I truly adore in my old device. "Instant On". Time will tell.
In another year, (assuming we aren't all dazed, starving and licking our radioactive wounds), we'll see prices dropping from all the competition. The pattern is the same; all the antenna of the manufacturers prick up when somebody demonstrates a successful new device, and copy cat machines go head to head in a market place hungry for, "Faster! Cheaper! Better!" Then the next thing you know, they're basically free, doing everything they ever promised, becoming a piece of our daily reality we take for granted.
And that day can't come soon enough.
-FL
Hey there, thepoint.com (I'm the founder) is perfect for this. Here's how it works -- you join, entering your credit card information, but your card won't be charged unless 100 people buy laptops and we "tip" the campaign. I've got a few questions out to the seller regarding shipping costs, etc. - once I get an answer, I'd be happy to setup a campaign if anyone is seriously interested in buying one of these. Regards, Andrew
.
It also means that Windows can compete - very successfully - in the same space:
ASUS Eee PC 1000H (Windows XP) [June 18]
The gate crasher
With the momentum is has already gathered, could the Eee beat off its rivals to become the Holy Grail of Linux computing - that killer product that brings Linux into the mainstream?
Don't bet on it, says Hugo Ortega, principal of Tegatech, a distributor that handles the Eee alongside competing devices such as HP's 2133 Mini-Note PC and ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) that run Windows XP and Vista and range well past the $3000 mark.
"The HP 2133s are outselling the Eee PC 20 to 1," Ortega says, "and Linux only accounts for probably 20% of Eee PC sales and less than 5% of overall UMPC sales. The fact that there's a $500 notebook out there is a big plus, but we find most [buyers] are more than happy to use a license in their office to upgrade them to [Windows] XP."
Acer, which continues its commitment to Linux, is likely to take a similar path. "It's a give and take between simplicity of usage for the masses versus full customisation," says [Henry Lee of Acer.] "The Linux version is really only to use exactly what is provided, and someone in the know can easily remove what's been installed. But consumers are accustomed to the Windows environment, and the Windows version will be a stronger player eventually."
Indeed, despite the philosophical appeal, faster performance and ease of use that these Linux machines provide, the availability of a Windows alternative may have already started taking its toll as buyers opt for the more familiar option. "The bulk of the requests and requirements we see in the marketplace are for the model with Windows rather than Linux," Lee admits.
Microsoft's efforts to push Windows XP into this space, even after it terminated the operating system's general availability on June 30, are reflected in the fact that XP-based Eee PCs somehow became $50 cheaper than their Linux counterparts. That price disparity has since been eliminated after Asustek bowed to critics who pointed out that the lack of Windows licensing fees - traditionally equivalent to around one-quarter the price of the entire system - should have more than made up for the cost of the expanded onboard storage in the Linux devices.
Even pricing parity, however, may not be enough to save Linux. As market expectations push the low-end machines towards having larger screens, more storage, and faster processors, they will begin to resemble low-end conventional notebooks - potentially diluting the low-cost appeal that has driven their success.
Linux fans, who saw the devices as low-cost and highly portable Linux workstations with a nearly infinite variety of uses, can still buy the Windows devices for the hardware and install Linux on top, but there seems little doubt the mass-market demand Linux-only devices will struggle to maintain itself.
"It's going to be tough in the long term" for Linux-based mini-notebooks, says IDC's Rego. "Microsoft will play tough in this space, where there's a massive presence of Windows. We don't have expectations yet for Eee sales of XP vs Linux, but Linux definitely needs to create increased awareness. If you go into the mainstream, people just want something easy that they recognise." Linux not essential to Eee PC success: ASUS [July 14]
$130 may not be much, but it's really not much of a machine either. You can probably get a used full-size P4 laptop for the same amount of money. This thing is barely enough to run even Linux well.
I'd buy one in a heartbeat for $150, if it had a decent keyboard.
I don't even care about a particularly large screen -- the main thing that would make this a killer app is ssh, and anything approaching a full-size keyboard is going to be much better than an iPhone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
To DSL.
50MB .iso for installation or to run as a live CD. It fits on a business card form factor CD. That's not just the OS. It's the OS, the Window Environment, all of the applications - to include multiple browsers (yes firefox!), chat, VOIP, spreadsheet, email client. A fully functional network OS with Server or Client profiles with advanced package management to add your favorite debian applications. Last major release July 2008.
Runs on (gasp) A 80486 with 16MB of RAM. Do you remember when that was an enterprise server costing $10,000+? Some of us do. Runs well on a P50 with 48MB or better. That is to say the software is modular and well integrated. The OS doesn't consume more resources than is required. Getting nostalgia yet? It makes a great base for virtual machines.
That's what I consider the low end of usable. And you? How many gigglehurts does it take to recalc your checkbook spreadsheet?
Do you know how they get all of that into such small requirements? They care. That's all. They just care. Is it that hard to care?
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Would you rather spend $250 on something you can actually do work on or $130 on something that won't be of any use?
Are you sure it won't be of any use? I've gotten quite a lot of use out of a 32 meg machine with 512 megs of storage -- and it didn't even have a working X, just a somewhat weirdly-sized console.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The system I learned to write APL on was 4.5" diagonal measure, 128 characters wide by 25 lines tall monochrome text (no graphics). AFAIK the longest well-written program in APL extant still fits on that screen. For detail view it had a Left64/128/Right64 switch.
It had Basic, too. For basic we debugged with printouts. That's still a good idea if you're programming in BASIC, which is not.
My lawn. Get off it.
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A $130 PC would be "useful" for personal UAV applications, among others. Not everybody wants to play WOW.
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What are you smoking? Linux at Walmart is not dead at all. They have a ton of systems available online like this $300 laptop and this $200 desktop. I have the desktop. It works fine and it doesn't suck the power from the wall like most of the PCs you buy these days.
I've even seen linux products on the shelf at the local Walmart from time to time. Go in the software section and some of the boxes even have penguins on 'em.
Walmart doesn't carry products that don't move a lot of units. So, again, are you confused?
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Anyone have any experience cross-compiling applications for MIPS? I have done so for ARM, and that's a hell of incompatibility itself.
Frankly, I wouldn't bother with this thing unless they change it to use an x86 core so all of ubuntu etc "just works".
Otherwise, it's just not cost effective unless ALL you need it for really is satisfied by the included applications on the included distro.
Otherwise you'll spend a lot more time then it's worth trying to get/maintain a decent distro for it. Maybe worthwhile when/if there are millions of them out there, but while they're few, and you're an early adopter, expect to find it of little use.
If you want something cheap and light/small that runs linux, you'd be much better off buying a secondhand Sharp Zaurus - at least they've got a fairly active community publishing more useful-then-default distro's, even if they do use ARM cores.
Much better still, get a eeepc for about the same price as the Zaurus, and run ubuntu on it.
Apparently you can play Crysis from an eee pc, with good detail and decent frame rates. All that's required is some special software that gives something similar to remote desktop to your kilowatt gaming rig.
It's sick and we shouldn't encourage it, but there it is. Unless you have Vista. It doesn't work with Vista (of course).
If you can do that then all other potential arguments about the mini laptops being under powered are just nonsense.
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So really that laptop costs $13,000. As a promotional stunt, they'll give you 99 laptops free.
--
make install -not war
At around $100, a laptop becomes an impulse buy for many people. Need a disposable machine you can buy for an overseas vacation? Need something you can give the kids where you don't have to worry if it gets lost or trashed? Need a laptop you can buy from a vending machine? How about handing out free laptops that tie you into some monthly subscription service? All of these become possible at a $100 price point.
Yeah, I sure can't wait to see laptops piling up in trashcans and landfills. Soon the Earth will be uninhabitable and we'll need robots to compact piles of disposable laptops into small cube, We'll have to take off on a giant space cruiser to live for a few years, serviced by robots day in and day out. Before you know it, the human race is a bunch of semi-gelatinous blobs sucking food out of cups, constantly entertained by mobile video platforms on their hover chairs.
...
Seriously, let's get this party started. I want my burger smoothie.
It's not a laptop but they're available. My friend brought in an Intel Atom "desktop" motherboard today. 64 bit. Dual SATA. Two channels of IDE. Onboard video. Hyperthreading. Windows XP-64 bit ran just fine when he added his 1GB stick of DDR2. 1.6GHz. ESX wouldn't install easily. Ubuntu Hardy didn't support the onboard NIC (yet?). $83 delivered MB + CPU. We'll both be buying several more. We haven't tried Xen or other distros yet -- Intel gifted a platform specific one of course.
The CPU has no fan. It pulls a max of 2 1/2 Watts. Even with Folding@home running the CPU heatsink was to touch indistinguishable from ambient. I can't wait to swap the MCH cooler with a video card cooler on the low profile version, add a SDHC->IDE converter, sub the PSU for a Pico-PSU and see how small a box I can fit it in. It would make a great robotics controller, thin client or car backbone to support media playback, GPS apps, file and cellular wifi sharing and heavy browsing. There's a smaller form factor board you can use that fits in the box your playing cards came in but I don't feel like diddling with LVDS video and I don't need 'em that small. There's already a British hosting vendor leasing racks of these for cheap because the cost and power requirements are low. I guess that's so they can fill out the caverns left by their power sucking but very dense server->bladeserver project and because the thing is dirt cheap.
That's all the review I've got after one day. More later.
This is the platform the next billion users are going to use to join us on the Internet. Many of them have money. Few of them have Watts. Trust me, we don't want them to build out the Watts.
But don't buy it to run Vista on. That's a non starter.
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I've seen water bottles that looked sturdier than this. This manufacturer will be hailed as the revolutionary first company to construct a laptop that one can snap--crosswise--over the knee.
I'm certain this plastic wafer includes el-cheapo caps either ordered from Massive Turd Deliveries, pulled from innumerable junk dumps all over China, or both. Hell, some of these things may come with their caps pre-blown. Just imagine the marketing campaigns: conductive goop layers to ply away the heat! Busted caps--like popcorn! (No doubt the soy grease they use as electrolyte will make this "true.") Nichicon's future is dark.
Thank god it looks like ass. I couldn't bear to hear design talent being wasted on something like this.
So let me scale this for you...
A MB is 1 1/1024th of a gigabyte, so the memory on a 16MB 80486 processor is about 1/256th of the memory on your 4GB laptop. The 80486 processors maxed out at 0.07GHz and in their day were considered a remarkable improvement.
A P50 was a processor from Intel called the Pentium that was introduce at 0.05GHz. Believe it or not we used to run a windowing operating system on that with office apps and like it. We even managed to do spreadsheets and mail merge and many more functions of our office apps than you will probably ever use.
These days it's almost certain your cellular phone has far more resources than this and yet it works not as well.
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Well the same thing as a prototype for a different branding. It is not a MIPS chip. It is an Xburst which is a Chinese clone of the MIPS instruction set. It does not have a floating point unit and there is a recompiled toolchain that does not use the FPU, and this has been used to compile Linux for the MIPSel (little endian) architecture. Flash support is weird. There is no plugin for the browser, but there is a standalone application that can play a downloaded .swf file. The operating system is quite locked down and seems to be some kind of single-user linux. If anyone has any suggestions on how to reflash the thing with something sensible (like a minimal command line Debian/MIPS) then I would be most interested to hear them. Here is some info on the CPU.
system type : JzRISC
processor : 0
cpu model : V4.15
BogoMIPS : 335.05
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : yes
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
Interesting to note that none of the top 10 on the list of best selling laptops at Amazon run Vista. There are a few with XP. I think things are starting to change... 'May you live in interesting times'
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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I also said somebody would remember the hugh interest when....
What on earth would a lone Borg from Star Trek:TNG want with a 400mhz laptop with 128mb of ram? It's not like he needs to check his email. He pretty much IS mostly computer.
Vaguely apropros, Asian firms are well known for designing products which feel clumsy and inept, while they can PRODUCE western designs that are perfectly fine - world beating even.
My new theory why this is: Face. In many Asian countries, criticicism is seen as personal attack or offense, and won't be tolerated - or make any difference. So customer X complains that product Y is unacceptable because of defect Z. Or in a focus group of users, user A says that it kind of sucks that the user interface puts flashy animation above speed. But all these are seen as direct insults to the developer of said feature. Therefore they are ignored as uncomfortable.
However western designs are critiqued and shaped outside of this culture, and arrive at the doors of Asian manufacturers as already completed designs - no need for criticism and feedback.
Ah, so it's like a badly made OLPC, on the "Give 98 get 1" program? ;)
I've been watching some of these ads from Ciruit City, Best Buy, etc. These Taiwan laptops are becoming very price competitive. Not as cool as a MacBook.
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Special for today, the cheapest laptop in bulk is being offered, for $25, a 486-66 in PC-AT form factor, complete with CD-ROM and 3 ISA expansion slots, as well as 17-inch CRT, designed to fit on your lap quite well as the case is to be laid flat rather than as a tower. The buyer must use this on the lap, or there is no deal! Priced to sell, boots to Windows 95, and has been tested with Linux.
Caveat, disclaimer: used rather than new, and as is.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away.
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