CherryPal's $99 "Odd Lots" Netbook

Robotech_Master writes "CherryPal, which Slashdot last covered back in 2008, has released a $99 netbook, the Africa, aimed at the developing world but (unlike the OLPC) available for sale to the consumer. But unlike most netbooks, the Africa is not actually made to a set design. Instead, it uses a hacker-like approach similar to the way home PC builders build their cheap beige boxes. CherryPal purchases odd lots of whatever components are available most inexpensively, builds netbooks out of them, and calls them Africas. The resulting machines will at least meet and may exceed the minimum specs given on CherryPal's website, and may be built around an ARM, MIPS, or X86-based CPU depending on what parts CherryPal has on hand at the time. The device ships with 'at least' Windows CE or CherryPal's custom 'Green Maraschino' Debian-based Linux distro."

Comments

In other words

[jyoull]

they're using the "Dell Method"

Re:In other words

[chill]

Dell has NOTHING on Packard Bell. I'm not sure what happened to them, but their equipment was shit and totally random. There are a few differences with CherryPal, though.

Since CP has their own Debian distro, people won't have to wonder if their are Linux drivers for the hardware found in the system. If it ships, it works and has drivers. Packard Bell was a challenge. "Oh. They shipped one of THOSE parts this time!"

PB wasn't guaranteeing minimum specs, they were saying exact specs on CPU, RAM and HD. CP's "at least this" is an interesting idea.

Re:In other words

[RMH101]

it's because they're *cheap* - if you want guaranteed hardware for 3 years, you buy corporate desktops and laptops: case in point - Dell have the inspiron and lattitude range of laptops. Pretty much the same thing inside usually - but the latt's are slightly better at taking abuse, fit docking stations, and *guarantee hardware for a set period*. All big vendors do this: IBM, Fujitsu, etc.

Re:In other words

[MBGMorden]

As a former Packard Bell owner, I must agree. My Packard Bell (originally a 486 SX 20Mhz with 2MB of RAM and an 80MB hard drive) was the most non-standard thing I'd ever seen.

Motherboard form factor? Completely made up by them. It had 2 PS/2 ports in the back, a serial port, and a parallel port. It had 4 ISA slots but they were on a riser card. Not reusing this case for anything else.

Power supply? It was reminiscent of the standard AT power supply in that it was hard on/off, but that too was custom. Instead of cables attached to a switch which completed the circuit (or a switch actually on the box), this thing had a giant plastic arm that ran the length of the case from front to back and into the power supply to toggle on and off.

The memory expansion slots? It had 4 empty ones - the base 2MB of memory was soldered straight onto the board. To upgrade the thing you had to fill all 4 slots - all or nothing.

Processor upgrade? They made it an option in the stupidest way. The CPU was soldered straight into the board much like the memory was. If you wanted to upgrade the processor, they provided a SECOND CPU socket that shipped empty. You want to upgrade you had to plug a new CPU into the replacement socket and then use a jumper to tell the board to use that socket instead of the built in CPU.

I did eventually do some upgrades on it. The 80MB hard drive got moved to 800MB. I bumped the RAM from 2MB to 6MB. Put in a sound card and CD-ROM drive. I also eventually got an Intel Overdrive chip for that extra socket and moved from the 486 SX 20Mhz to a 486 DX 75Mhz (strange that a 55Mhz increase in clock speed made such a difference - back then the machine was several times faster - these days 55Mhz isn't even noticeable :)).

Still, upgrading that system always was a hassle to find things that worked. Aside from laptops, that was the last mass produced system I ever owned. I just like having the freedom to mix and match parts as I see fit.

Interesting

[stoolpigeon]

I first heard about these via the white African (a tech guy in Nairobi). There is some interesting discussion there that revolved around capabilities, how realistic the $99 price point is outside the developed world and durability.
 
Getting these in the U.S. at $99 is pretty easy, but could one get them into an African country at that price? Max Seybold says yes, but I'd like to see it first. Then the question is how well it will sell, even at that price point when up against used hardware with better specs.
 
I'm all for more choices at the lower end of things. And I think this product is great even if for nothing more than the conversations it can generate that will bring more awareness about the needs in developing countries. But ultimately I wonder if this kind of thing is just a stop gap anyway until cheap smart phones and reliable data access are global.

seems a bit pricey

[castironpigeon]

Considering you can get legit hardware in a netbook now for around $200, getting what is essentially a bag o' crap for half that isn't much of deal.

Re:seems a bit pricey

[Yvan256]

Even worst, a bag o' random crap.

Re:seems a bit pricey

[killmenow]

A bag of random crap shouldn't cost more than a dollar. But at that price, I'd buy three.

Re:seems a bit pricey

[spike2131]

Depends on how easy the crap is to swap out of the bag.

$200 and no ability to fix things is way worse than $99 and an easy way to replace what breaks. Especially in Africa, where everything breaks, and jury-rigged fixes are the norm.

Re:seems a bit pricey

[b0bby]

And you'd pay five bucks shipping...

Hmm, I wonder if I can cherry-pick parts

[davidwr]

I wonder, if I'm willing to wait or pay extra, can I specify parts, like "any x86" or "anything but x86"?

cool

[Sir_Real]

That's not bad for an open device that will run hostap. At that price, these are essentially disposable. 1800mah is fully powerable by a 28 watt solar charger. You could build motion capture field cameras or something out of them. I love it when tech gets cheap.

Re:It's the anti-apple

[Nursie]

Have you ever heard of linux?

Debian (the basis of Ubuntu and by the sounds of TFA the basis of the cherrypal distro) has most applications compiled across very many architectures. It's already in place, drivers for a lot of stuff will be in the kernel. No problem!

(well, not quite, but it does help).

Specs

[Anonymous Coward]

they are:
a 400 MHz processor
256 MB RAM,
2 GB flash memory,
Ethernet,
Wi-Fi,
2xUSB
a 7 screen

(from here) as the links are down

Niche Market

[Ukab the Great]

If you:

1. Have a 2 year-old who's obsessed with daddy's laptop who really needs his own so he'll stop bugging you
2. AND you don't want to have to hunt on ebay for an OLPC child-proof laptop that costs the same as it did when it was purchased two years ago
3. AND you don't want to pay over $100 for something that will get destroyed in the first 6 months of usage

Then it's not a bad deal.

Re:It's the anti-apple

[MonsterTrimble]

How can you develop much of anything with such a shotgun approach to hardware...This would be good for the hacker kids of the 1970s/1980s - lots of time to play around, no mature apps (that cost less than $1000), and no real expectation that you could get real work done on a small computer.

How do we develop programs for anything? We have OSes that run on LOTS of different sets of hardware, and there are lots of programs that run across lots of different OSes. We talk about these daily on Slashdot: Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, Pidgin... the list goes on and on. And there is no way you can call any of those apps NOT mature.

Re:I can't wait to see this avaialble in the UK

[Robotech_Master]

Actually, according to their website, they'll ship anywhere in the world for $19 flat rate shipping. So it will cost whatever $119 comes out to in pounds whenever you order it.

This is democratisation of hardware

[tyroneking]

It's what the OLPC should have been.
Commodity hardware, whatever's cheapest.
And a Linux-based OS to boot (no pun intended).
For f***s sake - how easy they do it - and OLPC had to make things so freaking difficult.
Obama - please give your spare bank-bailout cash to these guys and get less developed nations on-line before we all go to hell...

Re:This is democratisation of hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's what the OLPC should have been.
Commodity hardware, whatever's cheapest.
And a Linux-based OS"

OLPC is that and more: sunlight readable screen, robust, wireless mesh networking, even more energy efficient than this "Africa" device.

Re:ARM/MIPS or X86?

[Robotech_Master]

You specify which OS you want at time of order, in the "order instructions" box. If you say "give me all Linux, please" they'll do it for you.

Windows might be more of a standardization issue. From reading between the lines in their blog post (where Max said you'd get "at least" Windows CE, but not Vista or 7), I got the feeling that you might get either Windows CE or Windows XP, depending on which OS the processor they had available that day would support.

Re:It's the anti-apple

[mcgrew]

They're slogan should be "works with nothing."

Dew knot truss yore spill chucker.

They will get buried in returns

[joeflies]

It doesn't matter that everyone will get at least the minimum configuration. What will happen is that people will find out what the other guy got (posting their configs on the net), and then anyone who didn't get as good of a configuration will return it and get another until they get one with similar spec as the best one out.