P5,000 laptop within reach, wish it was sooner
Posted by Scout on December 7, 2008
OLPC’s dream of an elusive $100 laptop may soon become reality. A company called Coby Electronics just announced its intention to bring a $99.95 (~P5,000) mini-notebook to the market in March 2009. The 7-incher will be called “PoqetMate-7″ (pronounced pocket-mate), with a 9″ version also in the works. If they’re successful, you can be sure others will follow. In a few years, netbooks could be almost as ubiquitous as cellphones are right now. Can you imagine?
Their press release includes a picture which suspiciously looks like the Astone UMPC (in turn based on VIA’s NanoBook reference design). Not sure if that’s actually how it will be packaged, though. As for the processor, they’ll be using those made by Loongson in China, also known as “Godson” or “Dragon Chip”. Word on the street is that they’re fairly reliable. Another cost-cutting measure is to exclusively use Linux instead of Windows. Whether this strategy will click with the mass market is tricky, but at that price, I see countries like China, India and us here in the Philippines lapping these up like crazy. And why not? Every student should have one of these.
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