The $45 Windows Laptop

YokimaSun writes "The search for a cheap laptop has brought us news from India of a $10 laptop (which later turned out to be a hundred dollars). Today PC Gaming News has details of a laptop which is selling for a measly 45 dollars, what do you get for that, you get a netbook running windows embedded compact 7, 128 megs of ram, a via8505 processor and a 7 inch screen capable of 800x480 pixels resolution." I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook.

Comments

"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[tripleevenfall]

"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

What is the point of this kind of trolling in article summaries, really?

Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[sl4shd0rk]

"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

You'd have better luck waiting for Duke Nuke- ...er..wait.. guess we can't use that one anymore.

Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[CastrTroy]

I think that hasn't been true in a long time. You might be able to get a similarly spec'ed laptop if you didn't care about form-factor or style that much, but then it's not really the same product. The new Mac Book Pro has taken things even further by giving the best resolution available for the money. Doing a quick price comparison can show you they aren't overpriced at all. The Dell Ultrabook XPS 13 currently retails for $999, while the Mac Book Air 13" retails at $1199. Of course the Mac is more, but it has a 1400x900 screen as opposed to 720p resolution, 1.8GHz CPU as opposed to 1.6GHz CPU and a height of 0.68 inches vs. 0.71 inches. The rest of the main features seem to be about the same, and while some may say, what's the difference between .68 and .71 inches, well, it's still 5%, which takes quite a lot of engineering to get rid of when you are looking at laptops of this size. Mac laptops are quite competitively priced, the only problem is they've decided not to make $400 laptops. Which is fine, because there is no money to be made in that market anyway.

Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a good trackpad, they are all equally terrible. I will keep my trackpoint nub, thank you very much.

Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[0123456]

I'm amazed how few people actually price shop before they claim the Apple laptops are overpriced.

I did just that when I bought my new laptop a couple of years ago. My Toshiba cost $1100 while the closest equivalent Mac -- AFAIR it had a sligfhtly faster CPU, less RAM and a smaller hard drive -- was about $2500.

So yes, overpriced it was.

Re:"I'm still waiting for my under $50 Macbook."

[mastermind7373]

I have used it. It was inaccurate and clunky. I have NEVER needed to rotate a photograph inaccurately in increments smaller than 90 degrees. When I need to rotate something precisely, I enter the numeric value or use a mouse, where I have support for my wrist to allow precise control.

The zoom functionality works well when the application supports smooth zooming. Otherwise, it's just as clunky trying to pick one of 3 locked percentages. This is a functionality support issue.

The scrolling drives me nuts. I HATE physics emulated scrolling. A simple friction slowdown is far more controllable and intuitive TO ME.

I realize Apple user's quite enjoy their trackpad. I simply wanted to point out that there are some of us who find it gets in our way. It's not universally better, it's suited to it's target audience: you.

Maybe the editors could actually read submissions?

[mykepredko]

This is an eBay sale of a discontinued netbook.

As somebody pointed out, if you wanted a $50 netbook, they can look on Craigslist or eBay themselves.

Nothing new or interesting here,

myke

Re:Lol...

[hobarrera]

I think you're just trolling. Why would you need more than 128MB to connect to a VM, that'd be a simple dumb terminal... I'm pretty sure dumb terminals at that resolution can run just fine with those specs.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[julesh]

... but isn't Windows 7 Embedded Compact the new name for what used to be called (much more appropriately) WinCE?

In other words, this is an almost-useless piece of junk that runs a nearly dead operating system that is being dropped by MS in its next version.

I bought something very similar in the UK for about £30 a couple of years ago. It was useless then, it'll be useless now.

Can't wait to see so-called "gamers" buy this

[GerbilSoft]

From the article:

Powered by a Pentium processor

Processsor Type: VIA 8505

Not only did they get the company wrong, it's not even x86 architecture. VIA 8505 is ARM-based. This isn't even including the fact that it runs Windows CE (aka Windows Embedded Compact), so standard Win32 programs wouldn't run on it, even if compiled for ARM.

Re:Can't wait to see so-called "gamers" buy this

[GerbilSoft]

Bonus round: Some editor got duped into posting a slashvertisement for an eBay auction. The netbook in question has been available from Amazon since August 2010. (Not the exact model number, but besides running Windows CE 6.0 instead of Windows Embedded Compact 7, the specs are the same.)

http://www.amazon.com/SYNET7WID-7-Inch-Wireless-Mobile/dp/B003ZYUCDS

Not "Windows" in any meaningful sense

[JDG1980]

I saw this same (or very similar) model on sale at the local CVS. One reason it's so cheap is that it doesn't run "Windows" in any meaningful sense. It runs an embedded-system OS that is called Windows, but isn't compatible with any existing Windows software. (Look for much more of this kind of confusion with the upcoming WinRT for ARM.) Furthermore, since this netbook doesn't have an x86 processor, it can't run the real version of Windows.

Re:Not "Windows" in any meaningful sense

[Rogue Haggis Landing]

I saw this same (or very similar) model on sale at the local CVS.

I'm pretty sure this is the Sylvania netbook that appeared in 2010 for $99 at CVS. Reviewers were not kind about it, but the novelty of buying a $99 computer at a drug store was sort of fun. It's no surprise that 21 months later it's dropped under $50.

These little craptops have always intrigued me, and it's just a matter of time before someone puts out one in the under-$100 range that's not entirely terrible. There's this guy that is available new from lots of ebay sites (I chose this one at random and am not endorsing it). It runs Android 2.2 and sports 256 mb of RAM. I haven't seen any kind words about it and from the specs it's likely still terrible, but you're starting to approach something respectable. It's not that far from being a 7" version of the Efika MX SmartBook, which isn't a world beater by any stretch, but which is light and fanless and runs Linux and sort of harks back to what was fun about early netbook.

Re:Lol...

[CubicleZombie]

Why would you need more than 128MB to connect to a VM, that'd be a simple dumb terminal... I'm pretty sure dumb terminals at that resolution can run just fine with those specs.

Once Corporate IT gets ahold of it, it'll need 4GB and a couple of cores just to keep up with Symantec Endpoint Protection.

Re:Lol...

[GrumpySteen]

We need a moderation option for "+1 Sad Reality"

Re:$1200 is not a good price

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't frankly care if something is 2 inches or 2.5 inches thick. Nor wether it has 800 resolution which I won't be using anyway. What I do care about is a floppy disk drive, plenty of serial ports and an a dial-up modem so I don't have to rely on shit dongles when in an office or at home.

Oh , but it doesn't have that.

Laptops in general are nothing more than vanity machines for people with more money than sense.

Mod me down fanboys, I care not and I have karma to burn.