An 800gm PC for $80? You gotta be kidding me.

Posted on 16 December 2009, Last updated on 16 December 2009 by

image This Menq EasyPC E790 has no place in the western world apart from bubble-packs at point-of-sale in a garage or supermarket but think about places where the only screen in use is the QVGA one on a $30 Nokia phone. The ultra-cheap laptop has it’s place and I expect that MenQ will sell quite a few of these if the price really is $80.

Unfortunately you probably won’t see this for sale to that end-user because $80 is a 5000-unit price before taxes, shipping and handling.[More info] You’ll probably be looking at $120-150 for one of these in the shops. If that’s the case then I guess this becomes much less interesting because for a few dollars more, you can leave the ARM11, CE combination behind and go for something far more usable.

Sascha got to test on at the Netbook World Summit and here’s his video.

Menq product page.

Via Netbooknews.com

25 Comments For This Post

  1. UMPCPortal says:

    New article: An 800gm PC for $80? You gotta be kidding me. http://bit.ly/7BvHKN

  2. Steve 'Chippy' Paine says:

    RT @umpcportal: New article: An 800gm PC for $80? You gotta be kidding me. http://bit.ly/7BvHKN

  3. Alejandro Huaman says:

    RT @umpcportal: New article: An 800gm PC for $80? You gotta be kidding me. http://bit.ly/7BvHKN

  4. EtlamRetep says:

    Sorry Chippy, but afaik the screen is WVGA and the CPU ARM9. But this does not mean that you were wrong – the performance is at least rather poor..

  5. Alex says:

    Speak for your self. I want there to be $80 notebooks in the EU/UK. I’ve often spent more than that on dinner! Which means, I could do what ever I want with this hardware and not be afraid of completely destroying to poor thing…

    Obviously not looking for an $80 machine with the same resolution (and likely CPU horse power) as my phone, but it could be useful nonetheless.

  6. paqutio says:

    Snap a webcam on it for Skypeing to make this netbook more useful. Else, all of its functionality are built-in to the smartphones which will still eventually let us leave this thing in the house.

  7. turn_self_off says:

    grab a cheap attachable laptop cam, and hook it to the usb port at the back ;)

  8. fixup says:

    Looks like the Delstar selling in KMart for $150. It is totally garbage unless someone figure out how to put a Linux on it. WiFi needs to be manually enabled after sleep and connecting takes forever. The built-in IE is too slow to be any use. No WM apps can install on to this CE OS.

    Other than that, the hardware is very good, better than any XP UMPC I’ve seen so far, much better than the 7″ eeePC. If someone figures out how to put Linux and FireFox on it, then it could be the mobile device everyone should own for the price.

  9. turn_self_off says:

    i would say that android with built in browser would be a acceptable alternative to firefox (altho if things keep going as they are, we will see fennec and opera mobile on android at some point).

  10. johnkzin says:

    make a 10″ version, as a convertible tablet netbook, 1024×600, and Android… and I’d think about it :-)

  11. turn.self.off says:

    sounds like it would be closer to $180 then $80 then, but sure :)

  12. johnkzin says:

    I’d pay it. If they hit all my “ideal midrange/tablet” targets, I’d easily pay $500-$700. Maybe even a little bit more.

    (what are those? http://johnkzin.livejournal.com/55488.html )

    So, just hitting “10 inch convertible tablet netbook with 1024×600 and Android”, yeah, I’d buy that for $180 :-)

  13. fixup says:

    Agree, Android is the way to go because the browser actually works well on mobile devices with minimum hardware resource, much more usable than the Safari in iPhone. FireFox is great but will eat all the 128MB.

  14. turn.self.off says:

    that depends. Most of the memory usage of firefox is a page cache in ram, not the program itself.

    another big element is that the firefox interface is xul (a xml based language) and javascript for the most part, while the same engine on its own worked fine on the N800 (a device that have only 128MB ram).

    basically, firefox in total is designed with a couple of assumptions based around a avarage home desktop/laptop computer. As are most linux distros, windows, osx and so on.

    put these in a environment outside of those assumptions, and they will fail to a greater or lesser degree. And that is why i end up going facepalm when people talk about having a windows running device in their pocket in the same way as their phone, and even expect to use current desktop software to edit media.

  15. johnkzin says:

    Of course, Android x86, and Acer, have ports of Firefox to Android.

  16. GTaylor says:

    Chippy, this is why I feel that there is a place for a portable screen device as an alternative way to access the primary device. Link to phone, make bigger; link to notebook in bag, make lighter; link to desktop, read from sofa. This is one place where touch would have real benefit beyond “cool”. Keep the full price equipment but use a portable screen the way you are talking about using this electronic toy.

  17. turn.self.off says:

    look up microsoft smart display…

  18. GTaylor says:

    Turn.self.off, Wikipedia had a good piece. Thanks, that is much of what I’m talking about, but from nearly ten years ago. Processors, connectivity, touch, licensing, the nature of the devices to connect to, have all changed a lot since. See the legal/marketing was the main hold up, or stick up. I hope that LG is still interested.

  19. David Hecht says:

    Ummm…they’re selling a unit very like this one–in huge quantities–on eBay, this very moment…for $119-126, 3-day Fedex shipping included:

    http://cgi.ebay.com/7-LCD-Mini-Netbook-Laptop-Notebook-WIFI-Windows-2GB-HD_W0QQitemZ250550459066QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Netbooks?hash=item3a55f89aba

    http://cgi.ebay.com/7-LCD-Mini-Netbook-Laptop-Notebook-WIFI-Windows-2GB-HD_W0QQitemZ280440063002QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_Netbooks?hash=item414b87c41a

  20. Charbax says:

    Cherrypal is selling this one now for $99 http://armdevices.net/2009/12/17/cherrypal-may-have-been-watching-my-videos-launches-products-i-reviewed-last-month/

  21. Marc says:

    You can find lots of information about this device (which is sold under numerous brand names and slightly different configurations since at least 1 year already) here: http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/

  22. ProDigit says:

    It’s compared to an EeePc701 which has 4GB of SSD and 1GB of RAM?
    If this machine was equipped with a DDR2 or DDR3 SoDimm slot it might have been interesting!

    But as far as I see it,EeePc 701 gets sold on ebay for less than $175, and is a much better purchase!

  23. Charbax says:

    You can’t compared ebay second hand or refurbished or dumpe eee pc 701 pricing with this one mass manufactured. If you want refurb or dumped price, then this ARM9 laptop would be $40 today.

  24. Schugy says:

    One.de sold out its last Via C7 Netbooks with 2GB (99 Euro) or 4GB SSD (119 Euro) a few days ago. While it’s twice the price I think it’s great for Edubuntu or something – a lot better for kids education.

  25. Catherin Rochon says:

    Sch

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