Tag Archives | Netbooks

RadioShack’s $99.99 (Kinda! Sorta!) Netbook

trs80model1001There’s something (mildly) magical about the idea of a computer that sells for $100. It captured the imagination back in 1982, when Timex introduced this one. People still call the OLPC XO a “$100 laptop” (plug: we’re giving one away) even though OLPC hasn’t yet ground the price down to $100. And now RadioShack–who some of us former still TRS-80 groupies think of as “The Biggest Name in Little Computers”–is selling Acer’s Aspire One netbook for $99.99.

Yes, there’s a catch. It’s the same one that every cell phone carrier uses to drive down the alleged price of most of their phones:  The ‘Shack is offering the Aspire at $99.99 only if you sign up for a two-year contract for AT&T 3G wireless service at a minimum of $60 a month. (The netbook has 3G capability built in.) In other words, you’re commiting to a total expenditure of $1539.99 (before taxes) over two years to get a computer for a penny under a hundred bucks.

Just how much do you save on the Aspire by signing that two year contract? RadioShack is selling the netbook at an unsubsidized price of $499.99. That seems a tad pricey given that a similarly-equipped Aspire (except without 3G) goes for $380 elsewhere.

My instinctive reaction to the ‘Shack’s deal is the same one I have to almost all ones that involve subsidizing an immediate purchase with a long-term contractual obligation to pay a fixed monthly service price: Don’t do it. The price of 3G service will likely fall, and relationships with wireless carriers tend to be better when you can cheerfully call them up and tell them you’re planning to dump them immediately for a competitor. (In addition, AT&T 3G coverage remains spotty–going online with the Aspire won’t be much fun at all if you happen to be in a neighborhood where you can only connect at EDGE speed.)

Of course, the utter universality of two-year contract pricing in the phone world proves without a doubt that the average American is willing to do the deal, rightly or wrongly. So I think it’s possible that these Aspires will fly off of RadioShack’s shelves. And I’m curious to see if other electronics merchants will roll out their own “$100 netbook” offers.

Would you take the bait?

(Image of TRS-80 Model 100 from OldComputers.net)

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Coby: We’re Not Working on a $99.95 Laptop

nocobyThis is weird. Yesterday, I blogged about a report on a site called Indymedia that low-cost electronics manufacturer Coby was getting ready to release a netbook-like mini-computer for $99.95. Today, I heard from a representative of Coby who says that the company is doing no such thing. Here’s Coby’s official statement on the matter:

Coby Electronics Corporation is not in fact developing or producing a laptop computer in the under-$100 price category, referred to in various erroneous reports as the“Midget PC,” “PoqetMate-7” and “PoqetMate-9.” Coby Electronics Corporation is not currently producing a PC nor is one headed to market at any price under the company’s name.  While Coby Electronics Corporation constantly monitors and evaluates all consumer electronics categories, no decision has been made to develop or launch laptops, nor have there been any specifications, pricing and distribution channels created for such product at this time.  Coby Electronics Corporation remains focused on producing high-quality, innovative and competitively priced products in a range of consumer electronics categories, including LCD TVs, Video MP3 players, Portable and Home DVD Players, Digital Photo Frames, iPod Docking Stations, Radios and Accessories.

That’s a pretty definitive denial. The Coby representative told me further that everything in the article was fabricated, including quotes from Coby representatives. Ross Rubin, an NPD analyst quoted in the Indymedia story, has more to say about this on his blog, and points out that his quote was lifted from a two-year-old New York Times article about Coby.

In my original post, I did use words such as “is reporting,” “according to,” “will apparently,” and “says that” to indicate that I was relying on the Indymedia post’s account of things. Obviously, it wasn’t reliable in the least, and it might have behooved me to adopt an even more skeptical tone. (Indymedia is, by the way, a citizen journalism site that allows ordinary folks to post items directly without editing; as with CNN’s false citizen-journalism story about a Steve Jobs medical emergency, this would appear to show the downside of such systems.) I suspect we will see devices along the lines of the “PoqetMate,” although perhaps not under $100 just now. But it’s official: Coby had no plans to enter this market.

All of this leaves one question: Why would anybody decide to make up stuff about Coby? It’s a privately-held company, so stock manipulation isn’t a factor.

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How Low Can Laptops Go? Coby Says $99.95

coby[IMPORTANT UPDATE: Coby says the Indymedia story was a hoax and they’re working on no such laptops.]

Coby, a company that specializes in dirt-cheap consumer electronics, says it’s getting into the dirt-cheap laptop business. A site called Arkansas Indymedia is reporting that Coby plans to ship a $99.95 notebook by March 2009.

Well, a sort of a notebook. According to Indymedia, Coby is saying it’s created a whole new class of computer, the “midget PC.” Well, maybe–the machines will apparently feature 7″ or 9″ screens, use non-x86 CPUs fron China-based Longsoon, and run Linux. Sounds like netbooks to me–very basic netbooks, perhaps, but not not a whole new approach to computing.

We don’t know what other specs the midget PCs will, um, “boast,” but you’ve gotta think they’ll have a smattering of flash storage, Wi-Fi (one hopes), maybe one USB port, basic sound pumped through a modest speaker system, and possibly no video output. Coby plans to sell it through grocery stores and other low-margin retail outfits.

Digging around on the Web, I see that the Coby’s pricetag may not be unprecedented–China’s Hivision already a $98 laptop, also based on a Longsoon chip. But it’s still an eyebrow-raiser, especially given that OLPC’s XO, the famous “$100 laptop,” still goes for $199. And the non-profit OLPC doesn’t need to eke out a profit, which Coby will presumably want to do.

Indymedia says that Coby’s brand-name will be PoqetMate. I like the reference, intentional or unintentional, to the old Poqet PC from the late 1980s–but I don’t know if Fujitsu, who ended up with the Poqet trademark, knows or approves of Coby’s plans.

The PoqetMate also reminds me of even earlier PCs like the Atari 400 (the first computer I bought with my own money, back in 1982). It’s stripped down; it’s presumably all solid-state; it’s likely at least somewhat hobbled by the fact that its CPU isn’t an x86 model, making it incompatible with most of the Linux software out there. Indymedia quotes Coby’s marketing guy as denying that it’ll be a toy. But it will surely be something less than a full-strength, general-purpose PC. It’ll be fascinating to see whether it turns out to be be a stunt or a type of computer that large numbers of real people use to do real work.

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OLPC’s Give One, Get One Deal: This Time For Sure!

g1g1The One Laptop Per Child Foundation–creator of the XO “$100 laptop” designed to help educate kids in developing nations–is back with its “Give One, Get One” for the second holiday season. In a nutshell, you make a $399 donation to the foundation. In return, one XO goes to a deserving child, and one comes to you. (In theory, you might give the one you get to a young person as well; I suspect that an awful lot of them are used by the big kids who forked over the $399, though.)

It’s a fabulous idea, and the best news about this year’s program is that Amazon.com is handling the fulfillment of the “Get One” laptops (at cost). Last year, the fulfillment firm chosen by OLPC proved incapable of getting laptops out to donors in an organized and timely fashion: When I made a donation I didn’t mind the fact that I had to wait for weeks after the estimated arrival date had come and gone so much as that the fulfillment house lost my mailing address. Repeatedly.

I always feel guilty even bringing all this up, since the “Give One” laptop is the one that really matters–if XO had told me that it simply didn’t have a laptop for me, period, I would have been okay with it. But if anyone knows how to ship out vast numbers of products reliably and promptly it’s Amazon, and it seems a safe bet that this year’s program will go infinitely smoother than last year’s bumpy start. In fact, Amazon says that they’ve got ’em in stock for immediate shipment–and when Amazon says that, I believe it.

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The Case For a Mac Netbook

“There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that.”

–Steve Jobs in yesterday’s Apple earnings call, responding to a question about whether Apple will release lower-cost Macs

Let’s begin with a few disclaimers:

–I have no idea what products Apple is or isn’t working on;

–Attempting to reverse-engineer Steve Jobs’ thought processes is a hopeless task that usually leaves you guessing he’ll do the exact opposite of what he ends up doing;

–If you assume that Apple will jump on a bandwagon or respond to pricing pressures, you assume incorrectly–it’s quite possible that the company will never make anything remotely like a netbook;

–Making predictions about future Apple products most often ends up making you look dim and Apple look smart.

With that out of the way, the question that folks have been asking lately about whether Apple will or should release a netbook-like Mac is fascinating. Regardless of whether the company ever does unveil a small, cheap, simple Mac notebook, it’s fun to think about the prospect of one. And I’ve come to the conclusion that such a machine could be in the works, in a manner that’s consistent with the Apple way and the company’s product line as it stands today. I’m not calling this a prediction. But it is a scenario.

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Operation Foxbook: Life Inside the Browser, So Far

I’m typing this in Firefox on an HP Mini-Note netbook. In fact, I’m doing everything in Firefox on the Mini-Note at the moment, because I’m engaged in the experiment I call Operation Foxbook, in which I spend a few days trying to go cold turkey on desktop applications and my fancy MacBook in favor of working in a manner that’s as close to purely Web-based as possible.

How’s it going so far? Not bad, but not entirely free of bumps. A few notes on the Web-based applications I’ve been using:

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Introducing Operation Foxbook

I do most of my Technologizer work these days on a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop that runs three operating systems (OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) and a full complement of applications for wrangling words, pictures, and Web sites (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, and whatever else I need at any given moment). It’s a great tool for the job.

But tomorrow I’m going to set it aside for a few days and launch what I’m calling Operation Foxbook–an experiment that involves doing as much of my work on the Web and inside the browser (a specific browser–Firefox) as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to try this for a while–I wrote about the idea of a “Firefox PC” back in this post. But when I was at PC World, I couldn’t truly go cold turkey from desktop software, since we used Adobe InDesign, a decidedly local application, to crank out the magazine.

Technologizer, however, is all Web all the time–and I know of nothing I do for the site that simply can’t be done with a Web app. And the notion of computers that serve largely as containers for a Web browser has hit the big time–there’s a whole class of inexpensive, small notebook known as netbooks. So I’ll use one such machine, HP’s Mini-Note, to do my Technologizer stuff, and will blog about the experience. I know some of the browser-based apps I’ll use: parts of both Google Docs and Zoho, for sure, and the excellent Picnik photo editor. And Gmail, too, even though I continue to both love it and hate it. I’m sure I’ll need to seek out other apps as I need them, too.

Stay tuned–I may need your advice and patience to get through to the weekend without grabbing the MacBook…

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Dell Joins the Mini-Laptop Movement

Remember when laptops were big, heavy, and cost two or three thousand dollars? Most of the action at the moment involves undersized cheapie models like the eee PC, HP Mini-Note…and Dell’s new Inspiron.
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