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Computers at drugstores...what's next?

T

Tupin

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2009
Messages
436
Location
St. Louis, MO
I'm sure you've heard about the Windows CE 6 laptop they are selling for $100 at CVS. If not:

http://www.i4u.com/39209/9999-sylvania-netbook-sale-cvs

With 300MHz, 128MB of RAM, and 2GB of flash memory it's no powerhouse, but it will should be good for some web browsing, note taking, and streaming videos from places like Orb. Oddly enough, this is a lot like this laptop available on Dealextreme:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.44700

I'm thinking of getting one of these to replace my eMate 300, which I currently use on a day to day basis to take notes, but it isn't pretty to stare at for so long so I was looking for a nearly instant power on/off device to supplement my main PC. Anyone have any experience with these? Like I said, I'm going to use this for basic web browsing, taking notes, and streaming media.
 
If you like these, you can get them cheaper slightly, from Chinese sellers from ebay. I have seen them, and to replace your emate it ought to be a big upgrade. For a while now I have wanted one, and I have been cautioned that it is no power house (like you say) and it looks perfect for note taking, email and basic internet browsing. I am not sure if streaming anything works well under WinCE 6 or not, I haven't seen anything to say yes or no.

I'd love to hear your review if you get one, and I had no IDEA they were being sold at CVS. At that price, I might just have to get one and skip shipping it over and risk it getting lost.
 
Yeah, that's what Dealextreme is. I went into a CVS for the first time in my life and they said they were out and may not get anymore in. They did give me a rain check.

Only one other CVS where I live, I might call them.
 
Hmm. I'm kind of excited by this, as I think it's high time the industry moved away from the near-complete dominance of the x86 architecture, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a real shift, particularily when the only non-Intel laptops available at the moment are machines like this, which are rather underpowered even by netbook standards. Hopefully if this is a commercial success it'll motivate companies to produce higher-power machines on the same basic architecture.

Also, they're still making Windows CE? Seriously? Huh.
 
I have been amused by how fast this machine has dropped in price. Ads in the local paper about a month ago had similar units offered for $200 by mail; now $100 at a local retailer and probably will be cleared out at the end of season for $50. Doesn't exactly seem a success.
 
Reading about it, it has an ARM9 CPU, two USB 1.1 ports and one USB 2.0 port--only the single 2.0 port will support anything other than keyboard or mouse.

The bang-for-the-buck doesn't inspire me; I think they're cleverly making use of the psychology of the $99 price tag. For not much more, one can get a netbook with an Atom or Via CPU and some decent features.

This same netbook looks to be going for between $50-75 shipped on eBay. Consider item 250697402667 for example..

I wonder if it could be hacked to run WFWG 3.11 in emulation mode...

My take: Save your filthy lucre.

On the other hand, there are some eBay sellers who think there's one born every minute...
 
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Chuck(G) said:
I wonder if the seller knows that he's chasing away business with that $500 asking price. Most eBay sellers offered less than 20% of the asking price won't even bother to respond.
Click to expand...

No idea, I checked the link and notice he sold a whole bunch of them and figured I would check out the prices and they seemed reasonable. Maybe people are drawn in by the 80% discount and think they are getting a much better deal. How many people even in the internet age bother to research prices on things these days anyway.

Personally if I am going to drag anything around that will not fit in my pocket I might as well bring something a little more usable then a Win CE device. The older 4:3 LCD laptops are not as bulky as newer widescreen laptops, my Thinkpad T23 is not that heavy or bulky and has a much more usable 1400x1050 screen that is 14". Later widescreens are too hot for lap use and seem to be as wide as a briefcase. Then again I don't normally bring a computer with me when I leave the house anyway.
 
Found one on Craigslist for $70, seems like a much better deal to me, especially since the ad said or best offer.

This is going to act as a replacement for a 25MHz eMate, so it should be a perfect machine for what I am getting it for.
 
Very underpowered. 300 MHz ARM, running Windows CE. Basically it's a Dell Axim or HP iPaq with a keyboard instead of a touchscreen. I have 400 MHz examples of each that I carry with me on weekends. For taking notes and looking stuff up, they're fine, if a little slow sometimes. And it's hard to argue with less than 100 bucks when a PocketPC based on comparable hardware costs $250 when you can find one.

I imagine most will be bought by people who have no idea what 300 MHz or Windows CE mean--the "I want the one with the bigger G.B.s" crowd. Which means they'll sit in closets for a while, then be plentiful on the garage sale circuit in a year or two, once they figure out their $3 discount bin card games from Wal-Mart won't run on them.

But you know what all that is and what to do with it, so I'd say that's a good deal for you, while they last.

Too bad 300 MHz isn't nearly enough horsepower to run a PHP/MySQL webserver, otherwise I'd be tempted to pick one up and put Linux on it. I'd love to have an ARM-based, netbook-sized server.
 
Unknown_K said:
No idea, I checked the link and notice he sold a whole bunch of them and figured I would check out the prices and they seemed reasonable. Maybe people are drawn in by the 80% discount and think they are getting a much better deal. How many people even in the internet age bother to research prices on things these days anyway.

Personally if I am going to drag anything around that will not fit in my pocket I might as well bring something a little more usable then a Win CE device. The older 4:3 LCD laptops are not as bulky as newer widescreen laptops, my Thinkpad T23 is not that heavy or bulky and has a much more usable 1400x1050 screen that is 14". Later widescreens are too hot for lap use and seem to be as wide as a briefcase. Then again I don't normally bring a computer with me when I leave the house anyway.
Click to expand...

i just got a free thinkpad T23 dumped on me. i just had a slap a hard drive in it. it's the 1.13 GHz Pentium 3 Mobile. 384 MB of RAM, and i love it. just to see what would happen, i put Windows 7 on it, and it handles it just fine. if you disable cleartext and all the other worthless GUI junk, it runs similarly to XP.
 
One of the local computer sellers was working on one for a guy, and he discovered that it has an image to the internal drive, which is flash based. This one had 2GB of main drive (which is really solid state ram I suppose) and had the 300mhz processor as well.

I would definitely chance this, but honestly we both thought it was kind of cheap feeling, like fragile, like a knock off game system is. Still I want to give this one a shot when I get the chance and give it a full review. It'll never be a heavy lifter but it looks good for basic internet stuff via Wi-Fi... y'know, craigslist, emailing, *maybe* youtube, lists, etc.
 
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