Wired checked into reports of a $37 Ebay laptop and finds it to be surprisingly legit. The 7-inch netbook computer runs on Windows CE and has a whooping 2GB storage! Did I mention that it also comes with WiFi too? For so little money, of course, this machine can only be an absolute basic equipment, but hey! A kid version of a toy laptop comes for that price at Walmart.
“What’s the catch (apart from the extraordinarily underpowered internals)?” asks Charlie Sorrel. “There appears to be none. These are factory seconds or items which have failed quality control tests. They may or may not come with original packaging, and they ship from Hong Kong. Sound risky? C’mon. They’re $37. What do you expect? It’s almost worth it just for the AC adapter.”
The laptop (mini-notebook) is available in black, white and pink, runs on a VIA VT8500 processor, which is clocked in this case with just 300 MHz. According to the manufacturer, this 32-bit ARM chip is enough to run Windows CE, for example, surf the Internet, videos and Flash animations (hope, iPad is learning something here).
Performance
- Processor Type: VIA ARM 32bit CPU
- Processor Clock Speed :300M Hz
- Processor/Manufacturer :VIA
- Processor Model :VIA-ARM VT8500
- RAM/Technology: DRAM
- RAM Installed Size :128M
- Display Diagonal Size :7″ TFT HD
- Max Resolution :800×480
- Display Technology :TFT
- Graphics Type :Integrated Graphics
Storage and Expansion
- Hard Drive Type :NAND Fast Flash
- Hard Drive Capacity :2GB
- Hard Drive Spindle Speed :NAND Fast Flash
- PCMCIA Expansion :1x SDCard slot
But before you jump-in and place an order on eBay, please notice that the CPU frequency is ONLY 300MHZ and RAM is ONLY 128MB — my smartphone has better configuration than this! So obviously, this laptop may not be as fast as a common PC or laptop, especially when you run some website or programs at the same time (expect iPhone 4 to perform better multitasking than this laptop). Further, because the IE in the Windows CE has not been installed with Java platform, some websites cannot be loaded properly, unless you install Java and some other necessary plug-ins.
