$200 Linux Laptop

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Thu Jul 26 17:13:35 UTC 2007


On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 06:42:08PM +0000, Christopher Browne wrote:
> ASUS is a Taiwanese company; it would be very interesting to hear if
> someone had any sort of contacts with them.

Wouldn't it make more sense to talk to their Canadian HQ in Markham?

> This is a mighty interesting device, BTW.  I'm a *little* bit
> surprised that they don't have a followup device that changes the
> specs by dropping display, keyboard, and and battery.  That gives you
> something *better than* the DECtop box mentioned not too long ago, but
> which likely drops out ~$100 worth of hardware.
> 
> And gives you something you could velcro to the back of an LCD monitor.
> 
>    * Processor: Intel mobile CPU (Intel 910 chipset, 900MHz Dothan Pentium 
>    M)
>    * Memory: 512MB RAM
>    * OS: Linux (Asus customized flavor)
>    * Storage: 8GB or 16GB flash hard drive
>    * Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
>    * Ports: 3 USB ports, 1 VGA out, SD card reader, modem, Ethernet,
> headphone out, microphone in

At least that is a reasonably equiped machine, and it has flash storage
which is probably a large part of the price.

> That one seems unbelievable.  Did they get a shipment of machines for
> free, or something?  That's fairly much a "full featured" laptop, not
> making any of the design compromises involved with the ASUS Eee (e.g.
> - screen size, disk space)

Hmm.  My guesses at what they might have to pay for parts (probably
guessing high given volume discounts are big):

40GB disk $20
256MB DDR400 $10
keyboard $2
mainboard with ethernet, video, via chipset, wireless, etc $50
casing $20
cpu $30
screen $20

So if my guesses are right, then they sure don't make money at that
price, but since I am probably way over estimating, it really does look
like it should be possible to build at that price, if you make them in
high enough quantities.  Pretty amazing still.

The Asus is much much more impressive at it's price I would say,
although obviously tiny.

--
Len Sorensen
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