"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."

So group buy...

...who's in?

Re:So group buy...

http://www.pledgebank.com/

Re:So group buy...

Even closer in spirit, I think, would be www.eswarm.com. I've met one of the founders, and they've been in development for a long time, it seems. From what I understand, the whole point of e-swarming is to post something you'd like a discount on (like these cheap laptops, or even regular consumer items--blenders, ipods, car insurance, etc--and see if you can find the requisite number of people to affect a bulk buy discount.

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.

Re:What's the keyboard like?

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...

Who cares if this one is for real, they ARE coming

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

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.

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.

Re:What makes you think that won't 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.

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.

Not new - not cheapest

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.

Will it run Flash?

I was just looking at the minimum specs for running Flash version 9 http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/systemreqs/ [adobe.com] 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.

a little problem

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.

Re:a little problem

I was with you right up until you re-installed ME. Turn in your geek card. Now.

Here's a cheaper one...

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...

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

Possible use

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.

These have been around for a while

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

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.

Re:No wonder it's cheap

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.

Re:No wonder it's cheap

You can browse, run most OpenOffice products at a useable speed (and all of them if you don't mind some lag). And use connection software to tunnel into your work machine from outside the office. And use chat software. What more do you want with a mobile machine?

Re:No wonder it's cheap

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.

Re:No wonder it's cheap

With specs like that. It's pretty much useless.

That's what she said.

Re:This deal is intened...

Yeah, but how many /.errs have a Beowulf cluster of friends?

Re:This deal is intened...

who needs friends when you got a cluster of 100 laptops!

Re:This deal is intened...

My Beowulf cluster is my friend. Does that count?

Re:Looks pretty poor

The article doesn't mention a VGA port but at that price I'd be amazed if it has one.

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].

Re:Wow - low specs...

Extra dodgy.

The website [impulseglobal.com] for Carapelli Ltd. (the supplier) is blank, the street address is a P.O. Box, although they list phone [phone]) and fax numbers (886-2-25941330) which may be active.