Cheap Decent Laptops
You’ve been reading about the $100 laptop designed by MIT and the One Laptop Per Child organization. It’s a cool and revolutionary idea. As the fortunate affluent few, we forget that most of people on earth have no contact with the Internet and little if any of the technology we take for granted.
But as cool as the super cheap and stripped down $100 laptop is, I’m equally excited by the trend toward decent yet affordable serious notebook computers. Just for fun, I tried to get into my local Wal-Mart early enough on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) to but a $378 HP laptop. It was a fool’s errand. I did not get up early enough to be one of the lucky FOURTEEN (n=14) people who scored this cheap but capable laptop.
So today I’ve done a little research on eth Dell Computer site. I did not look very hard, and do not claim this sis the best possible deal you can find. But the three models I looked at are all competent machines I could use.
For my taste and money the $449 is a sweet spot, as it includes WiFi and 512MB of RAM. For another $225 bucks the more B130 has a better performing and faster clock rate CPU, a larger screen, and a significantly better warranty (that surprised me).
Inspiron B130
[Basic Mid-Range]
$773 WiFi, 1.73MHz Pentium M,
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimm
2MB cache
533MHz FSB,
40GB disk
Optical: Combo/DVD+RW Drives
24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
15.4″ screen
1Yr Ltd Warranty
1Yr Mail-In Service,
and 1Yr HW Warranty Support
Inspiron B120
[Basic Entry-Level]
$449 WiFi, 1.4MHz Celeron M,
512MB DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimm,
1MB cache,
400MHz MHz FSB,
40GB disk
24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
14.1″ screen
90-day mail in warranty
Inspiron B120
[Basic Core System]
$399 no WiFi, 1.4MHz Celeron M,
256MB RAM, 512MB Shared, 1 DIMM
1MB cache, 400MHz FSB,
40GB disk
90-day mail in warranty Service
and 90 Days HW Warranty Support
Optical: 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
14.1″ screen
November 26th, 2005 at 6:04 pm
It is disappointing that the MIT product will not be available in the US. There are plenty of poor children whose parents are in poverty. I don’t see how a $100 laptop works in third world countries where so many are starving and the income for a family is often this and they can’t afford vaccines or school. This laptop will not work if disconnected from a network for a significant period of time … what is there is a real disaster.
For the US the base core system would be fine for many, might want to have wifi, but that should add more than $15. you could even ditch the writer.
Get it to $150-250 in a year or so and that would be within a stones throw of being affordable for a lot of the poor.