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We'll make millions I tell you, millions! (laptop)

 
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Well I need one of these, and I bet we could sell tons of them, here are the specs:

"The Starbucks Laptop" (patent pending)

A lightweight, no-frills, inexpensive laptop, perfect for browsing, emailing, and word processing.

- 2 pounds
- small footprint, maybe 10"x8" or even 9"x7" (the keyboard has to be decent to use)
- 800 x 600 resolution
- 10 or 20 gig hard drive
- 800mhz to 1ghz processor
- 256 megs o' RAM
- 1 USB port
- 1 PCMCIA type slot ???
- maybe a firewire port ???
- built-in wireless

Cost: $500

You want more ports? Buy a USB hub...
You want CDs? Buy an external drive...

You want more frills? Buy a more expensive machine...

Anybody else want one of these? Anyone think the specs should be tweaked?

It seems to me this is a serious empty niche somewhere between pocket pcs / pdas, and subnotebooks...
 
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Originally posted by Bert Bates:
...It seems to me this is a serious empty niche somewhere between pocket pcs / pdas, and subnotebooks...


Well, Intel has their $400 EduWise on the way. And there's the $135 laptop being developed for the OLPC initiative. But neither of these are being targeted to "chic" coffee shop surfers.
 
Bert Bates
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chic - shmeek

Those are a couple of very cool initiatives, I think I'd heard about them before, but they're very cool.

Those are close, but not exactly right... Everyone says that the big cost is in the LCD, which I can believe, but you can buy a nice portable DVD player with a 1000 x 600 LCD for $200 - $250. If you strip out the CD / DVD player there's really nothing mechanical left, except for the hard drive (those iPod hard drives are pretty cheap) and keyboard, but those have to be really cheap...

ok, I thought of one addition, a speaker, but you could skip that, or add a headphone jack.

So, you strip out a bunch ports, throw in a slow (by today's standards) processor and you're good to go!
 
Rancher
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The only modification I'd make is to strip some peripherals and add a couple more USB expansions. eg sound and network can be 'plugged' so 3 or 4 USB and sell in packages allowing things like CDRom, DVD, Floppy drives, sound, network (wireless?), bluetooth, GPS, whatever and let the buyer choose what is required.
 
David O'Meara
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Oh yeah, and maybe PCMCIA can be external as well or just forgotten completely. What would you need in PCMCIA and isn't available via an external USB interface?
 
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