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Thread: $150 laptop

  1. #1
    Veteran Member dishis's Avatar
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    Default $150 laptop

    Not great specs and a linux operating system, but still interesting if its legit.


    http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/product.html

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    I smell a ripoff! No notebook, even with those specs, goes for $150! when I first looked at the post and before I opened the URL, I imagined this notebook was one of those with the crank on the side and sent to third world countries.

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    256 Mb memory? It wouldn't have enough memory to run anything useful after loading the OS. Might not even load the full OS. A 40 Gig HD? Not bad for five years ago, but not good enough for today, especially if you are going to d/l a lot of music and games.

    I think once you upgrade this laptop enough to make it useful, you will have spent a bit more than $150.

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    This is totally doable. All the parts are coming out of Scandinavia direct from a vendor that's within blocks of a major manufacturer.

    This product is immense overstock being sold. They probably paid 140 for the unit whole, sat forever, loaded an image on it and are now selling it.

    not to mention this:
    Pricing, specifications, availability and terms of offers may change without notice.
    Taxes, fees, shipping and handling and any applicable restocking charges are extra, and vary.
    Says: "Buy me, Sucker"
    People are not ruled by their memories.

  5. #5
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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    Mast, do you really think 256 Mb is enough memory to do anything significant?

    Right now, I'm running Mac OS X, a solitaire game, and Firefox, and I have 195 Mb active, 159 Mb inactive, and 220 Mb free.

    When I'm working on one of my web pages, I often have two browsers, two word processors, a graphics program, and an ftp client running at the same time, with multiple windows open in each app. I don't think I could do that with 256 Megs. And a graphics intensive game--whew!

    Does Linux use significantly less memory than Mac OS or Windows? That's the only way I could see it working.

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    It's all license fee-free stuff. Linux does well on P3's, so a Celeron M should be no problem. Knoppix is designed to load and run the whole thing right from a 600MB CD, so 40G should be fine.

    256M Ram means not to try Vista unless you know you don't need a bunch of other programs running, but it sounds like XP or Win2000 would be okay.

    I couldn't tell you how well the whole gadget would hold up. You hear about the power problems in Toshiba's M35X series and the heat-related backlight failures on recent Sonay VAIOs, so it isn't as if getting some name-brand machine is any guarantee. The hardware, itself, isn't that expensive.

    If I can scrounge the money to put toward it as an experiment, I'll let you know.
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    ed è subito sera

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    I'm surprized you guys haven't heard of this. Someone designed these $150 computers, some with crank-up power, for children in developing countries. They are low in "specs" but they open up the world for needy children. I think that you can donate them on a website somewhere to schools.

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    God/dess Casual Observer's Avatar
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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    Mast, do you really think 256 Mb is enough memory to do anything significant?
    If you have a well-tuned Linux kernel, that's plenty. Really. That said, what's the real allure of the $150 laptop for people in nations where better-performing options with more widely-used applications are available?

    It's all about what you're going to do with it, really. That's what it's always about. Use what you like; like what you use.
    Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    ^^Giving big corporations like MS a thumb, having something legal but free or relatively cheap. and a 14in lcd often costs that much alone.

    Seing that I revoked 5 computer operator licenses on Friday alone, I'm a little bit weary of people learning non-windows os. They can't even get to grips with Windows and passwords.
    I've come a long way since I believed in anything, and I've come half way around the world.

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    God/dess Mastridonicus's Avatar
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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    Quote Originally Posted by Darling View Post
    I'm surprized you guys haven't heard of this. Someone designed these $150 computers, some with crank-up power, for children in developing countries. They are low in "specs" but they open up the world for needy children. I think that you can donate them on a website somewhere to schools.
    These aren't those people. The companies that do that, do a great job of having software giants pay on the cost of the laptop to put their software on them and endorse some products. Lindows and such do this with their pcs. Similar, but not these guys in particular. Most of the companies you talk of offer pretty new computers (mid life cycle) to that market through simple, yet effective, screening.

    This laptop is ELC. (End of Life Cycle)

    Quote Originally Posted by UtahMike View Post
    Mast, do you really think 256 Mb is enough memory to do anything significant?
    *nix in general uses less than 64 megs running. What causes it to jump is xwindows and the windows manager you use.

    For example. KDE2 fully implemented can run most things on 90 megs of ram with some virtual memory in use. While Gnome can go a gig before you know it. Aqua (OSx) interface uses a decent amount of memory, but a lot of work is done on your video card through the Quartz Extreme technology.

    In reality though, these systems do exist. But as the site says, it's almost all overstock/refurbished items sold as new. As I quoted, that's why everything about the damn this is subject to change without notice.
    People are not ruled by their memories.

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    Default Re: $150 laptop

    Quote Originally Posted by Casual Observer View Post
    If you have a well-tuned Linux kernel, that's plenty. Really. That said, what's the real allure of the $150 laptop for people in nations where better-performing options with more widely-used applications are available?

    It's all about what you're going to do with it, really. That's what it's always about. Use what you like; like what you use.
    I'm sitting at my cousin's computer on the other side of the house right now. But I've been using an old PowerMac 6360 for at least a couple months now, after the CRT for my B&W G3 died and I went to the old backup system. I've not been inclined to replace the B&W's monitor after noticing I no longer waste an hour or two per day on YouTube because the old backup machine can't handle it (specs: 160MHz 603e PowerPC, 80 megs Ram, and a 1.2 gig drive). But it handles almost everything I want to do...i.e., light web-browsing, email and wordprocessing. And the once or twice per month bout with Tetris is about as "gamey" as I'm ever gonna get, even if I were running an 8 GHz, Octal-Core, 512 gig Ram, 2 terabyte drive machine!

    As to Linux, I've been experimenting with something I like better than Knoppix, the Emulator(Qemu) version of Puppy Linux, run from a USB stick,

    http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/qemupuppy/index.html

    It just seems lighter to me than Knoppix, and is fairly slow, although usable for some light web-browsing, at least so far, on a 1.3 GHz P4 system running XP. But I've not used the accelerator software included with it, and it is possible to boot Puppy Linux directly from the stick as well.

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