Lenovo Aims $199 PC At China's Rural Population

athloi writes "Lenovo has announced they are gearing up to sell a basic personal computer for 'China's vast but poor rural market'. The pricetag could be as low as $199. 'The new Lenovo unit will include a processor and a keyboard and will use a buyer's television set as a monitor, Chen said. He said he had no details on the processor size or other features. The new PC goes on sale later this year at prices of 1,499 to 2,999 yuan ($199-$399), Chen said. Lenovo is the world's third-largest PC manufacturer, behind U.S.-based Hewlett Packard Inc. and No. 2 Dell.'"

Yea, right

3,000 yuan is like a year's salary for China's poor.

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And beyond that, they'll not have much use for it. Without internet access, a computer is a tool for the middle and upper classes only (unless you think using a computer at home will making rice farming or sweatshop-working better).

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I think you completely miss which group will benefit from this the most: rural students bound for college. Even in rural communities, most students attempt the college entrance exams. Many are accepted into big universities in big cities. It's quite a big

Ugh

Almost all SD TV's make horrible monitors. I'd think you'd be better off with a OLPC from a usability standpoint.

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Not to mention, for US$200 you can get better than an OLPC in processing power, once you discard the display. If they're stuck on getting the price as low as possible, and there are enough TV sets around for people to use them, the proper price point is I

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Horrible is relative, and for someone who doesn't have a computer, and can't afford anything better, a TV is much better than nothing. I started out on an Apple ][ Standard back in 1978-79: 40 column video and we were thrilled to have it, although we event

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And have you been frozen in a block of ice since 1979, that your expectations haven't risen?

Re:Ugh

{sigh} why do people persist in ignoring the actual content of a message, and focus instead on whatever detail they can use to deride the other person? If it matters to you, I'm typing this on a dual monitor software development system, so of course my expectations have risen.

Then again, I live in a country where personal computer ownership is near-ubiquitous, where the only people that don't have a personal computer (or more than one) are those who simply don't want one. But if I were a poor Chinese peasant, who has no expectations greater than what I had back in 1978, that TV-based computer might be considered a Godsend. It's all relative, and that TV display is a one Hell of a lot better than nothing.

At the rate China's industry is expanding, I would venture a guess that the people who are the target market for this system will eventually have the opportunity to raise their expectations as well. But that takes time, and you have to start somewhere.

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Does anyone know the capabilities of China's regular broadcast television standards? I would hope that it would be better than NTSC, something on the order of PAL/SECAM maybe.

Last I heard, China uses PAL.

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You can generally get a lot more than that. 640x480 is not uncommon for NTSC sets using composite video, and I have a 27" set that will actually run up to 1024x768. Blurry, but readable.

Re:Ugh

But the OLPC is designed in the U.S. and made in the Republic of China (Taiwan). Now, the People's Republic of China does trade with both countries (even though it doesn't recognize the existence of the ROC) but importing a "computer for the people" from them is politically unfeasible.

An SD TV makes an OK monitor if you can live with 320x480 4-bit graphics -- and there was a time when many Apple ][ and IBM PC folks did. I'm sure many Szechuan villagers would consider such a setup the epitome of high tech. The problem I see is that nowadays people want computers mainly for connectivity — and making an ultra-cheap PC does nothing to create the necessary infrastructure in China's many rural regions.

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But the OLPC is designed in the U.S. and made in the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Some of the components are made in the PRoC, and the designs are all available royalty-free, so they could use them if they want and produce the machines locally. Alan Kay said he hoped that a lot of countries would do this, and produce their own copies

But, but, Proffit Gates says so!

Almost all SD TV's make horrible monitors. I'd think you'd be better off with a OLPC from a usability standpoint.

You can go back and forth with this, bashing OLPC [slashdot.org]. Of course people are better off with OLPC and Gates will think of some reason he hates t

Not only price but law

I was under the impression, there was limits on what people could buy in China. A chinese class mate was telling me how you would get slips, that would authorize you the ability to buy 1 computer. But you were limited on how many or what you could buy. So even if you were rich, it wasn't like you could go down to the store and buy 10 computers for a home cluster. Anyone know more on this?

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I was under the impression, there was limits on what people could buy in China. A chinese class mate was telling me how you would get slips, that would authorize you the ability to buy 1 computer. But you were limited on how many or what you could buy. So

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If you were establishing a new government today, which would you prefer? Capitalism or a centralized economy?

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Definitely some sort of a planned economy. If you give vendors free rein to set the prices of goods, consumers get royally screwed.

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That's interesting. Whose job is it to plan the economy? For example, how many sets of golf clubs should be put into the economy each year?

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If you were establishing a new government today, which would you prefer? Capitalism or a centralized economy?

I personally - aspects of both. Running a country at maximum efficiency is complex. No single rule works everywhere. And even when you setup just t

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but centralized economy if done properly has this strange property of lowering crime and fraud

Really? Where, in the last 100 years or so, has it ever been 'done properly'?

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But China today isn't so black-and-white in terms of the economy model. It's a weird mixture of capitalism and communism.

That's for sure. China itself is far from a centralized economy, although some regions within it may be. Some of the autonomous regio

1975

Your class mate must be talking about 1975. I was born in 1976 in China, never heard such "slips" for computers.

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Maybe in soviet Russia you needed a slip authorizing you to buy 1 computer...but not in China.

In at least 3 medium-large cities I visited these amazing 6+ floor computer stores that puts PC world and anything else in the UK to shame. The choice was amazing

It makes me laugh.

It makes me laugh everytime I see someone develop a "cheap" computer with substandard, obsolete technology. The irony is that I can buy a nearly top of the line computer for $199 here in the states. It just takes some smart shopping and rebate forms. Examples:
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749939/ [fatwallet.com] (laptop for $181 after rebate)
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/749936/ [fatwallet.com] (desktop for $180)

What I'm trying to say is that Fry's should open up a location in rural China.

bullshit

That's a load of crap. You aren't buying a laptop for $181. You're buying a laptop $459.93 and almost $500 in software. Then you have to jump through fucking hoops and try to cash in on 23 rebates and HOPE you get your $755 in rebates back. You're an i

He who laughs

The irony is that I can buy a nearly top of the line computer for $199 here in the states.

Well, you won't get a good gaming or media computer for that much. But if all you want is a basic web-surfing/word processing beast, then even $200 is too much, unl

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I've bought four or five $180-200 desktops from Fry's without any rebate (not including monitors). They're Great Quality brand, and come with Linux preinstalled. All of them are still running, including the one I bought ca. 2002.

So much for M$'s Conquest of China.

It should be obvious, but Bill Gate's victory lap was premature [slashdot.org] and I told you so [slashdot.org].

Old times...

The new Lenovo unit will include a processor and a keyboard and will use a buyer's television set as a monitor

The return of the C64. :-)

Re:Old times... the C64

The Commodore 64 was a landmark in personal computing, I had one tricked out with hard drive, printer, modem (for BBS - there was no internet), Z-80 co-processor to run CPM. C-compiler, Pascal Compiler, and a big stack of game cartridges... When the IBM PC

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No, I'd say the TI-99 holds the title for landmark; essentially the same type of machine being introduced today, but ahead of the C-64 by a few years. I wish I could get it out for nostalgia's sake, but my brother took a hammer to it years ago.

I just bought a 163 pc

without Hard drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse and OS.

Essentially there is a mini-itx motherboard with a Celeron CPU for $79. CPU included, add 1G memory for $24 and case for $60, and it came to about $160. I can get a hard drive from newegg for dirt cheap and have a Linux PC for under $200.

Yeah, the mini-itx celeron system will not be the fastest and it is certainly not a gaming machine, but for a desktop pc to surf the web and all that, it is pretty cheap. I'm guessing if you include a monitor and mouse / keyboard it would be more, but I have that so, this is a realy cheap deal.

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I'm guessing if you include a monitor and mouse / keyboard it would be more, but I have that so, this is a realy cheap deal.

There is a surplus of used, decent CRT monitors, at least where I live. All the second hand shops have more then they can sell. N

How about all those "recycled" monitors

That we have been sending to China. If they had stockpiled a few of them they would have cheap monitors to go with their .1k$ computers.

Not worth it

Um... seems to me that I can go to Newegg and put together a fairly kick-ass computer (certainly when compared to what Lenovo seem to be offering) for ~$400US. At least OLPC seems worth the price tag, considering what you get. In this case it sounds like

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Where did you get $399 from? The summary clearly states it's $199. Even $199 is probably well out of reach for your average Chinese farmer, though. Of course, so is most of the stuff they're likely to find on Newegg.

China already has cheaper PC's

Gold Leopard King GLK has computers the are selling all over Asia, from China to India.
  These PC retail for the equivalent of $5 US!
  There is only a single chip in a cartridge the rest is just buttons and interconnect, no chips. They have at least 15 models that I have seen.
  They support printers, modems, a mouse, and supports 100 of video games from perfect clones of most Atari 2600, and early Nintendo like Mario Brothers.

  I have been trying to track down this company, there products are in shops everywhere, but there is no Address, website or any information on how to contact the company.
  Even the shop owners don't know how to contact them because there are just people that come around selling then to the shops.

    Model numbers look like GLK-6102, GNC-1133, GLK-5002, GLK-1119, GLK-2012,GLK 98, GLK 1339, GLK 5002
    They also seem to come under many other brand names, and make lower end game clones that are sold here in the US, and even in Walmart China.

    With a little bit more work, they would be able to add a web browser and many other cool apps.
    I would really like to get in touch with this company.

Here is an example:
http://famiclone.emucamp.com/goldleopardking/glk.h tm [emucamp.com]
http://www.museo8bits.com/famiclones.htm [museo8bits.com]
http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/famiclones/gold _leopard_king.htm [ultimateco...tabase.com]
http://n-europe.com/special.php?sid=retro3&page=2 [n-europe.com]

This is really just ....

a updated version of the Commodore Vic-20 [oldcomputers.net] or the Atari 400/800 systems [atarimuseum.com]. Similar price point, and the market in China is 25 years behind North America,so it makes sense

Still a few months salary

The poor in China have these great manufactoring jobs because Mexicans and Latin Americans were viewed upon as too expensive because of $.33 an hour vs $.11 cents in China.

The middle class already can afford a pc. However I do admit the Chinese are very fr

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Well, they should just ship George W. over there. Maybe he can convince them to (ahem) "stimulate their economy" by spending all their hard-earned money on U.S. made products, just like he wants us to spend all of our savings to buy Chinese-made products.

PCs are now cheaper than free

Here in the US working PCs are free. Or even less than free. A while back a loaded a pickup truck with old computers, CRTs and some printers and scanners and took them to a recycle facility. I effect I paid someone to take them off my hands. Today I still have a couple working computers that are powered down and in storage. I tried giving this stuff to a school (my daughter is in 3rd grade) but the school has a "minimum standard" that they will accept. Basically if it's not a 2Ghz Pentium with a good sized hard drive and monitor and CD/DVD they don't want it. The school has to haul of their old stuff to be recycled too.

So anyone who wants a three or four year old PC can have on for the asking. and if they work it right can have hundreds of them. All of these are usable and better then the using a TV set for a monitor.

And in just a few days...

I'm sure they'll all be running Spam@Home

Wal*Mart suppliers @Home

Now Wal*Mart can charge their own suppliers what we are charged.

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Maybe because Communism is about sharing the means of production rather than giving everyone everything ;)

Re:I thought that China was communist.

China is an authoritarian capitalist state nowadays. That's more or less the opposite of communism.

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What gave you the idea that China is or has ever been communist?

And even if they were, why would that imply the government should give them computers for free?

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everyone is forgetting about the Atari 800XL ... mine even had a tape drive!

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Thanks for the memories ... I loved my CoCo2 (16k upgraded to 64k ram) - I learned assembler on that old box. When the CoCo 3 came out, with 128k of ram (which I upgraded to 512k + 3 floppy drives + 2 tape drives + multi-io + speech synth + mouse + touchpa

You mean like they did in 1998?

The Commodore 64 WebIt [zimmers.net] a 486 laptop bottom half with Windows 3.1 and a pre-loaded 64 emulator.

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Well of course they are assuming that those who would by the system either already have or can afford to buy a TV.