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...
Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. (If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room.)
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.
"We're kind of on the level of crossword puzzle writers... And no one ever goes to them and gives them an award." ~Joe Strummer sscce.org
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!
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.
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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