News Bits: World's Cheapest Laptop, Dell Ships Laptops With Wrong Keyboards, Ubuntu on Dells

Impulse's World's Cheapest Laptop is the world's cheapest laptop

Image courtesy Alibaba

This laptop's name is actually "World's Cheapest Laptop", which is actually true. The laptop has the following specifications:

• 7-inch screen
• 400MHz processor
• 128MB RAM
• 1GB Flash storage
• Couple of USB ports
• SD Card reader

The World's Cheapest laptop is $130 wholesale, with the minimum purchase being 50 units.

Full Story (Alibaba.com)
Via (Engadget.com)

Dell ships more laptops with wrong keyboards

Dell said on Friday that some of its XPS One machines were shipped in the UK with US keyboards. Apparently, Dell has not learned from its previous wrong keyboard problems. Dell says it has fixed the issue, and all XPS One machines are now shipping in the UK with UK keyboards. It is unknown exactly how many machines were shipped with the wrong keyboards.

Full Story (ChannelRegister.co.uk)

Ubuntu 8.04 now available on select Dells

Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is now available on select Dell systems. The OS will be available on the XPS M1330n and Inspiron 1525n notebooks in the US and many other countries. Early August will see the addition of the XPS M1530n and the Studio 15n to the Ubuntu-powered lineup.

Full Story (Direct2Dell.com)

The Future of Videos

Forum member trebuin has generously written an excellent article detailing the future of video technology. Blu-Ray has recently won a major victory over HD-DVD media, but has not taken off as DVDs have in the past. There are several things causing this and it may very well drive what happens in the future. The current media sources are through DVDs, Blu-Ray, and downloaded/copied videos on a media server.

Read More in the Forums

The Best Defragmenting Tips and the Future with SSDs

trebuin has also written a thorough article on the defragmentation of drives, and why it is unnecessary to defragment Solid State Disks (SSDs).

Read More in the Forums

 

Ubuntu is a very nice Linux distro. I'm actually using it right now.

 

I agree. Even though I still prefer windowsXP Ubuntu is a very nice alternative.
Took me a while to get my evdo modem working but finally got it and I use Ubuntu when I do my banking and bill paying online.

 

Dell screwed up again??????

 

I'd actually like to have that laptop..lol
What proc is in it?

 

400mhz of mouse power

Group buy anyone?

 

My grandfather would actually complain about the weakness of that computer... and my parents' 11-year-old desktop has more muscle.

 

I doubt its as small though..

 

Great articles, trebuin. Thanks for the insight!

 

That's a pretty cheap laptop.

 

Man, that WCL sure is unimpressive

 

400Mhz would suck even on a stripped down dieted linux setup. But I do love me some Ubuntu...

Can someone point out the differences between a UK and US keyboard, because Im at a loss as to why they would be different. I know we use different grammar and such but how does translate into a different keyboard?

 

They can't be serious with the WCL. First you have to spend $6500 to get your hands on one. Then the hardware specs... it's more like a child's toy than anything useful if you ask me. Maybe toys r' us will start carry it?

 

I love how Chaz has

 

That little notebook could become a MAME station for me.

 

Except for the price. It's a whole lot cheaper than other mini-notebooks. And while I wouldn't pay $400 for an Asus EEE, $130 for one of these and then loading an extra Windows 95 license and Opera 9.51 doesn't sound so bad. Even Win2K might be runnable, though hard drive requirements make that a close call (650 MB to install but for some reason it wants 2 GB free).

The 50-minimum makes it somewhat impracticle though. If you're going to spend $6500 you might as well get a powerful Sager and a nice tablet, and maybe an external monitor or projector to boot. Not like you could use 50 laptops at once anyways.

There are some differences in where the characters are placed, in particular non-alphabet characters. I've only used a UK keyboard once, but it certainly did cause me a lot of typos .

 

There's also the £ character available.

I've used the UK keyboard most of my life, but had no problems adapting to the US, except it's annoying when I need to use the £ character.

Here's wiki.

It might be useful for schools to develop basic computer usage. Windows 98 should run okay on it. If it's decently built, you could even use it for early childhood education.

 

Actually Ubuntu runs fine on 400MHz, 256MB RAM.]
I wouldn't doubt Xubuntu, it runs fine on 300MHz and 128MBs RAM
It'll probably be a custom distro.

 

the "Future of Videos" link doesn't work. Link from Search doesn't work either.

Anyone got a link or know what sub Forum the thread is in?