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"World's Cheapest Laptop" Available in Bulk Only
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Jul 28, 2008 02:36 PM
from the if-it-looks-like-a-fish-and-smells-like-a-fish dept.
from the if-it-looks-like-a-fish-and-smells-like-a-fish dept.
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."
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Submission: 'World's cheapest laptop' now available by Anonymous Coward
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So group buy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So group buy... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.pledgebank.com/
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Re:So group buy... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first met the guy, and heard his idea, I thought it a brilliant use of the internet, and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on before.
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Re:So group buy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Has some distro won the prize?
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Re:What's the keyboard like? (Score:5, Funny)
Except for slower processor, half the RAM, one eight the storage, non-integrated WiFi requiring an extra dongle, no bluetooth, lack of GPS, no cellphone hardware, inability to make calls, no built-in iTunes music and app stores, doesn't fit in your pocket, weighs 5x as much, and it could be vaporware. Yeah, besides all that, its a much better thing to type on than a cellphone...
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Re:What's the keyboard like? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for slower processor, half the RAM
So what? If I really need the power, I'll fire up an EC2 instance -- which, by the way, is one more thing to add to the list of things that I can do with this device.
And that's leaving aside the fact that I was talking about ssh, which, even with modern cryptography, runs acceptably on a Pentium 2. And by "acceptably", I mean excellent -- I mean that humans can only type so fast, and even a machine that old can more than keep up with my keystrokes to encrypt, compress, and send over the wire.
one eight the storage
For less than the additional cost of an iPhone, I could by a USB stick to use with it. Or I can connect to S3. Or that EC2 instance. Or my server at home.
non-integrated WiFi requiring an extra dongle
Boo hoo, extra dongle. As compared to the iPhone, which, if it does require a keyboard, that's a whole separate device I'd have to carry with me -- and one significantly bigger than an iPhone.
no bluetooth
While I'm at it, could get a bluetooth dongle. But one of the main reasons I'd want bluetooth is for a keyboard, so if the keyboard's good...
lack of GPS
If the battery life is like other laptops, that and the boot time probably make it not the best GPS device. That said, I live in a small town -- I rarely have a use for even Google Maps, so GPS would mostly be a toy.
no cellphone hardware
I've got a phone already. It's much easier to use than an iPhone for making calls -- mostly since it's actually just a phone; if I open it up and start pressing numbers, and then press "send", I'm connected.
It cost me $1, since I already had a service plan. Speaking of which, I actually get to pick a service plan, and I don't end up with half the cost of the hardware going to AT&T, whether I buy service from them or not.
inability to make calls
I'm sure Skype will fit on there, and I already have a USB sound device.
no built-in iTunes music and app stores
Oh how I'll miss the wonder of buying DRM'd tracks, or free tracks in a proprietary app...
And app store? You must be fucking joking... You do realize that, being Linux and open, I can load any Linux app onto it that I want? And that, seeing as the App Store has a rather hefty fee even to submit your app for consideration (which isn't a guarantee that Apple will sell it), and the selection is considerably more limited...
You've actually managed to hit on one of the weakest points of the iPhone.
doesn't fit in your pocket
You've got me there, but... You have seen an EEE PC, right? Even a Macbook Air? I can live with that not fitting in my pocket. Or weighing five times as much. It's still less than half of a full-sized laptop.
and it could be vaporware.
So could the iPhone, before it was actually launched. But hey, if it is, there's still the EEE PC, which is several times more powerful, has a lot more built-in (camera, etc), and I personally know it works.
Yeah, besides all that, its a much better thing to type on than a cellphone...
Yes, it is. Which is kind of the point.
In fact, I noticed you made not a single point about typing. iPhone typing is good, but it's not perfect, and it's miles away from being able to type 80 WPM on an actual keyboard.
Let's also completely ignore the fact that the iPhone will only run one app at a time, and while the screen is a decent resolution, you're going to have to squint a bit if you want to get real work done.
So, question: Have you ever actually used ssh, given that's the specific purpose (other than browsing) that I want out of a mobile device? Or are you just reflexively jumping to defend your shiny new toy?
Looks like your signature fits perfectly.
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I don't have 99 friends (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just an anonymous coward and I don't have 99 friends.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This deal is intened... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This deal is intened... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This deal is intened... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:This deal is intened... (Score:5, Funny)
My Beowulf cluster is my friend. Does that count?
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400MHz ought to be enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Who cares if this one is for real, they ARE coming (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Who cares if this one is for real, they ARE com (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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What makes you think that won't happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Re:What makes you think that won't happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but these ultra-cheap laptops are going to make a huge impact in first-world countries, not just in the developing world. Sure, Microsoft may practically give away Windows to an African customer, but not to customers in Europe or North America. People in the U.S. alone will buy millions of these laptops, and Microsoft cannot maintain first-world profit margins with third-world pricing. Who is going to pay for a $200, or even $50, for an operating system on a $100 computer?
Microsoft can't win this battle in developed countries, because the price of the hardware puts a ceiling on the price they can charge on their software. Either Windows drops to $10 a license, or Microsoft concedes the low end of the market to Linux. And once that happens, Linux will start eating its way up the price-point ladder.
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Re:Who cares if this one is for real, they ARE com (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Not new - not cheapest (Score:5, Insightful)
As this liliputing article points out [liliputing.com], 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.
Re:Not new - not cheapest (Score:4, Insightful)
basically it's a MIPS32 CPU, PDA rather than laptop range.
Really? It depends on which MIPS core they use. The R16000 is a very fine core. Look at these results: http://www.tabsnet.com/index.php?option=com_benchmark&task=list&bid=1&sysid=1 [tabsnet.com]
It performs very well clock for clock compared to x86 processors. Of corse, that is a 64 bit core. It's the clever bits (out of order, branch prediction, etc) which make it go fast, not the 64 bittiness.
So, in other words, don't knock MIPS.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Minimal bang for the buck (Score:3, Insightful)
Will it run Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I doubt it. It depends on the Flash animation you want to view, of course, but YouTube videos don't even play anything close to smoothly on my 500MHz iBook.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They did. At least, some time ago they did just that. You can even see an icon for it if you look closely at the picture in TFA.
One catch though, it's only version 6 (and AFAICT, standalone-only).
a little problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:a little problem (Score:5, Funny)
I was with you right up until you re-installed ME. Turn in your geek card. Now.
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Re:a little problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Sure, if you can live with zero tech support and have the technical skill to deal with all the hardware and software issues.
Why is it that Slashdotters can't grasp that most people are not techies? They cannot do stuff like resolve subtle system conflicts or install news OS.
My niece wanted a new computer, and didn't have much money. I found her an old XP system (actually pretty powerful) on Craigslist for $50. Except to keep it working, I have to answer a support call from her every few weeks. A few weeks ago, the mechanical mouse she had stopped working. I told her to go buy an optical mouse. She did, but then last week she accidentally unplugged it from the PS2 port while the system was live. I told her to disconnect the PS2 adapter and plug it into a USB port. Didn't work, and I wasn't up to figuring out why over the phone. So I had her reboot, which meant explaining how to do that from the keyboard. Which fixed the problem — until next time. I don't mind giving her all this tech support for free, but most people don't have access to somebody like me.
These are all problems you or I could solve faster than it takes to describe them. But most people can't. That's why a simple, Linux-based, preconfigured laptop without a lot of features that most people don't need is a good deal, even if it's more expensive than a more powerful used machine.
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What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
To replace $300 temperature controllers from the 1980's, used on kilns and heat treatment furnaces all over the world?
To replace $400 data acquisition systems from the 1970's, used on process control systems all over the world?
At this price you can begin replacing industrial modems, tearing out ancient proprietary CNC controller systems on mills and lathes, retrofit large solar panel charge controller systems with these.
There are industries all over the non-first-world that can't afford industrial-quality control systems. These sorts of crummy little computers have 100x the performance and flexibility of old ladder-logic programmable logic controllers, and could be turned into amazingly useful, easily-updated or replaced, manufacturing control systems.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All that's missing is a few ten of thousands of dollars to pay some programmers to write the software.
Luckily for us, someone's already done it. It's a neat concept called Open Source.
The US government paid for EMC [linuxcnc.org], a linux-based CNC controller system.
Using OWFS [owfs.org] you can make user-based file systems and run multisensor digital temperature and voltage detection systems to control kilns. (I've done this.)
There are a plethora of linux-based replacement PLC controller projects running out there.
Here's a cheaper one... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/206720976/7_mini_laptop.html [alibaba.com]
$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've seen this before... (Score:5, Funny)
End Sarcasm
Possible use (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I'd prefer... (Score:3, Interesting)
These have been around for a while (Score:5, Informative)
Actually you can buy the same ones from Bestlink [bestlinkeshop.com]. 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 [imageshack.us])
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 (???)
Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
With specs like that. It's pretty much useless.
If useful to you means "can play the latest FPS video games", then yes, it's useless.
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
FPS video games?
Just look at those specs, man. 128Mb of RAM, 400Mhz CPU. There's a shitload a person [b]can't[/b] reasonably do with that machine without obscene amounts of disk thrashing (assuming it even has a disk):
- Use KDE, GNOME, or anything else approaching a modern DE (XFCE is even questionable)
- Use Firefox
- Use Konqueror
- -Maybe- use Opera
- Run Open Office and anything else
128Mb of RAM was constraining and tight in Linux as early as 2002 or so, even with Debian. Today, I think you'd be pretty much restrained to using an embedded linux platform - and even then, you'd still not be able to get 'mainstream' versions of popular applications to run fully due to the RAm limitations.
If they'd charged $30 more and put 512Mb in there, it'd be a LOT more reasonable, and still the cheapest thing available, anywhere.
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
With only 128 MB of ram?
Ouch.
I think a little more RAM would make a world of difference.
Make it 512 MB and at least two GB of Flash with a SDCard slot for expansion and it will good to go.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Cattledung. I've seen KDE running smoothly on a desktop with specs worse than that, perfectly usable for web browsing, e-mail, programming and text editing - which is exactly what its user, a Comp Sci student, needed on a daily basis.
Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:4, Informative)
Hell, modern PDAs approach the specs of this thing.
Yep heres two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N810 [wikipedia.org]
Granted it is an ARM CPU but its still the same clock speed. You can pick up the N800's for 190-210 in some places and I'm sure >200 on eBay.
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:5, Funny)
128 Megs of ram is useless. I am speaking from incompetence.
Fixed that for ya.
To be fair, most people don't have the specialized competence needed to run a computer properly.
Most people in the affluent West are just consumers. Typically they can't tune their own cars, heat their own homes or hunt their own food either. In the worst cases, some people haven't been educated to do anything more useful than consume corn syrup and TV shows... they are like big ol' plants.
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Re:No wonder it's cheap (Score:5, Funny)
With specs like that. It's pretty much useless.
That's what she said.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing to note, 400MHz today isn't 400MHz 10 years ago. Depending on which processor this thing uses, it could be much much more powerful than the 10 year old laptop, or it could be much much less powerful than the 10 year old laptop. We certainly have new technologies today which could allow a very quick 400MHz machine. Imagine, most of the newest Core 2 Duos only sit at 2GHz.
Re:Looks pretty poor (Score:5, Informative)
Be amazed!!! There's a picture of the ports on the pruchase site (linked to from the artcle) and the specs and yes, one of the ports is external VGA [alibaba.com].
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of projectors. There are lots of them that have only VGA plugs.
Also I think it is very rare for there to be a projector or display that has DVI but does not also have VGA.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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 Mac Classic my wife used to get through law school, several years of law, and then half of medical school only had a 512x384 9" monochrome CRT...
Now, I agree that one wouldn't want to do much in the way of desktop publishing on a 7" screen - and programming could get ugly, but it is more than capable of checking email and making slideshows... if your slide can't be seen on a 7" screen then it can't be seen across a room, either. You can also type text into it and format it later. Even web surfing can be
Re:Wow - low specs... (Score:5, Informative)
The website [impulseglobal.com] for Carapelli Ltd. (the supplier) is blank, the street address is a P.O. Box, although they list phone (886-2-25969225) and fax numbers (886-2-25941330) which may be active.
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