Contact
Subscribe

Alpha400 netbook.

Jan 2, 2009
Uncategorized

I think that this is the cheapest Linux netbook around. The kicker being, it uses a MIPS CPU, so you’re basically stuck with the OS that it comes with, (or possibly debian). The factory OS is also 2.4 kernel based. I wonder how much of it works in 2.6, and also I wonder how much of their 2.4 varies from mainline 2.4.

CPU asides, the rest of the hardware isn’t spectacular either. 128MB of RAM is pitiful these days. Just 1GB of flash too.

“Supports File Sizes up to 8 MB” is kind of.. bizarre.

Despite the miserable hardware, a year ago, this would have piqued my curiosity, and at $150 I probably would have picked one up. Now though, for just a little more, you can get an eeepc, or other netbook which is far more useful.

Nice to see the pricepoint getting lower all the time though. Getting closer to the mythical $100 laptop, but the hardware still sucks.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

7 Comments
Tags , ,

7 Comments

  1. Christopher Blizzard  •  Jan 2, 2009 @18:01

    Wow, uhh, MIPS? Yeah, I don’t think so. What year is it again?

  2. Anon  •  Jan 2, 2009 @18:36

    It’s a sad day when for a little more money you get machines with as much RAM as this has storage space. And with that MIPS CPU I can’t help feeling that I would be saying stuff like
    four-zero-zero, party over oops out of (cpu) time…

    I only hope the battery lasts for a week non-stop (or something).

  3. Simon  •  Jan 3, 2009 @06:36

    Yeah, that might be shaped like one, but I don’t think it can really be compared with what most people think of as a netbook. 11B wireless, for god’s sake – not even G, let alone N. I can easily believe it’s the cheapest thing on the market – but really, it’s worthless. Most cellphones have better specs than that…

  4. FACORAT Fabrice  •  Jan 4, 2009 @15:20

    There’s also G-Dium, running Linux and with a One Laptop Per Hacker :
    http://www.gdium.com/en/product

    LCD screen 10″, Resolution 1024 x 600, Mandriva G-Linux, CPU 900 Mhz 64bits Loongson™ 2F by STMicroelectronics, RAM 512MB DDR2, Removable storage 8 or 16GB Flash G-Key, WIFI 802.11 b/g, SD/ SD HC card reader, Ethernet RJ45 – 10/100Mbs LAN, Webcam, Multi-finger touchpad, 4 hour autonomy

    http://www.gdium.com/group/58/home

  5. davej  •  Jan 4, 2009 @17:33

    the gdium looks interesting, but I don’t see anywhere how much it costs.

  6. FACORAT Fabrice  •  Jan 5, 2009 @11:22

    it seems that it will cost about 400$. But with the OLPH ( One Laptop Per Hacker ) program, you can have one for free.
    http://www.gdium.com/group/58/home ou http://olph.gdium.com“

  7. oliver  •  Jan 7, 2009 @12:17

    Probably yet another instance of the device described at http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/ . Btw. it doesn’t even have screen dimming… I wonder what other cuts the makers have taken.



  • huaglahglah huaglahglah