First Intel Atom based MID gets priced -- $1131!?

Intel's been making a lot of noise about MIDs for a while now, but we're going to guarantee that the entire category flops if this first wave of pricing info is accurate. Australian importer Tegatech's got the Gigabyte M528 up for pre-order, and while we're intrigued by the 800MHz Atom processor, 512MB of RAM, and 8GB SSD, we're certainly not willing to pay AU$1199 ($1131) to satisfy our curiosity -- especially since the Linux build was so half-baked when we played with this thing at CeBIT. Of course, this isn't official pricing (and it's actually dropped from AU$1549 since we first saw the listing), but let's hope this is even more inaccurate than usual, eh?

[Via UMPC Portal]

[v3xx @ May 13th 2008 6:31AM]

the MID link in the post doesnt seem to load anything. or at least “chrome://performancing/content/editor/entmid” doesnt link to anything.

[John @ May 13th 2008 8:37AM]

NILAY!

Please learn how to replace -- with —

Double hyphens are for typewriters only, and it's especially heinous in the title.

[Andir3.0 @ May 13th 2008 9:06AM]

Wow... I hope those double slashes don't kill your baby or something more heinous like mess up a title.

[linuxamp @ May 18th 2008 1:13AM]

Double hyphens are not only for typewriters. Run doublehyphen --h or --help for more info.

[max @ May 13th 2008 6:36AM]

Who is this Autralian that you speak of?

[Saad Rabia @ May 13th 2008 6:39AM]

This must be a joke! Wasn't Atom supposed to be the cheapest processor Intel would ever produce?! And $1200 for Linux?!!!

This feels like an overpriced 3G Touch smart phone.

[zomg0t @ May 13th 2008 6:44AM]

"ever"? Why would you say such a thing?

[Saad Rabia @ May 13th 2008 6:46AM]

@ zomg0t: You question me like if you know something, can you please tell me what you know?

[DefPo3t @ May 13th 2008 6:50AM]

@Saad Rabia
I have an answer for you
"Wasn't Atom supposed to be the cheapest processor Intel would ever produce?" In five-ten years from now i guarantee intel will have made a cheaper processor It is inevitable

[zomg0t @ May 13th 2008 6:54AM]

I know that the trend of processor design is that they get cheaper to produce, and that the reason they increase in price is because they are better than the previous designs. The Atom is not exactly the fastest chip... that's one reason why it's so cheap. It's also cheap because of its 45nm process. when Intel releases 10nm processors with low clock-speeds, it will probably be cheaper than the original price of the Atom. This is all speculation and in no way hard evidence, but it's backed by history and the general trend of low-end and mid-range CPUs.

[Blake3443 @ May 13th 2008 7:18AM]

reason it is so expensive... we jet raped for prices in aus. even though the exchange rate for AUD to USD is .94ish we get charged as though the year is 1998 and the exchange rate is .50ish.

[ethana2 @ May 13th 2008 8:18AM]

"$1200 for Linux?"

Uh, you get a handheld computer with it, dude.
..but yeah, that's awesome. It'll probably be a ton easier to kill windows mobile than it will be to kill windows XP.

[Jeebus @ May 13th 2008 12:22PM]

"we jet raped [...] in aus"

A couple of typos there. Replace j with g and insert the missing n.

[Bobfantastic @ May 13th 2008 6:49AM]

Do a sense an impending death-watch for MIDs...?
The HD-DVD one was so much fun!

[DefPo3t @ May 13th 2008 6:58AM]

$1131=delusional money hungry company
For that price you could get a Apple/Sony/Toshiba/HP/ any other name brand laptop .One thing these companies seem to ignore is umpc's never caught on due to their high price tag. but when you lower the price (ie eeepc) they sell like hot-cakes. Heck for $500 I could have an iPhone or eeepc and have change left over depending on which model'ss i bought

[darkstar @ May 13th 2008 8:56AM]

is the dollar value that bad now or something??
for 1200, i rather get an OQO model 02!
www.oqo.com.
no sacrafice in power, ports, size, and weights!

[Hellios @ May 13th 2008 7:02AM]

That $600 EEE looks a lot better right about now...

[ethana2 @ May 13th 2008 8:20AM]

Unfortunately, the Eee is in the process of being Embraced, Extended, and Extinguished.

[everunman @ May 13th 2008 7:06AM]

Dont read into much about Tegatech, they still have the Samsung q1 Ultra Vista for about us$1900 when sellers in the Usa have it for us$650

[Aussie @ May 13th 2008 7:11AM]

Keep in mind tech is horribly overpriced in Australia, For example a Panasonic TH-50PX80 is $1600 US RRP, its $2700 AU RRP, despite 1600US being about 1700 AUD.

[Saad Rabia @ May 13th 2008 7:14AM]

Thanks for the eyeopener. :)

[gad get @ May 13th 2008 7:21AM]

Yowch! Glad I'm in Canada!

[GuniGuGu @ May 13th 2008 7:49AM]

and i'm glad ebay let me buy these things off you and cut out the middle adding 1000% mark-up :p

[GuniGuGu @ May 13th 2008 7:50AM]

Crap the above post was suppose to say middle man instead of middle. Oh well :(

[Sam @ May 13th 2008 8:15AM]

That is a halfway decent price for a UMPC running a real operating system.

I'm guessing this thing will have a hell of a time beating the N810 at anything, and those run for about $400.

[ethana2 @ May 13th 2008 8:22AM]

By 'real' you mean 'desktop', right?

With festival and espeak, I wouldn't expect all your tech interaction to be graphical five years from now.

[ethana2 @ May 13th 2008 8:25AM]

Sphinx and espeak***
--sorry about that.

[fourthletter @ May 13th 2008 8:32AM]

looking forward to some performance tests on Atom, I have heard alot about VIAs new UMPC chipset being much faster.
Why does anyone bother with these, even the Eee PC is crap compared to a 2nd hand IBM thinkpad X40 1.4Ghz Centrino . 12" 1024x768 . thin as a supermodel and full of really smart design.
They usually sell for £240 on ebay with refurb warranties.

[sinjinn @ May 13th 2008 4:12PM]

yeah.. i really want to stick that on my dashboard .. eejut

[Bob @ May 13th 2008 8:49AM]

Hey, this is MUCH better priced than OQO's solutions

http://www.oqo.com/

I wonder if you could just purchase this for $1100 and get a copy of XP and install it on there...

[Das @ May 13th 2008 8:50AM]

yikes 800mhz atom
talk about slow...

[Steve Paine @ May 13th 2008 9:03AM]

The price has been reduced 20% since we first reported on this. You might actually see this for $750 in the U.S. Why:
http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/05/m528-pricing-drops-into-the-safety-zone-expect-750-in-the-us/

Chippy.

[gerbick @ May 13th 2008 10:01AM]

Thanks for that link, Steve Paine. At that price - $750 USD or less, I'll buy one.

It'll look nice right alongside my Nokia N810.

[substance90 @ May 13th 2008 10:44AM]

$750 is still too much for these specs and the size is not a couple hundred bucks worth advantage...

[john @ May 13th 2008 11:46AM]

Yeah, I'll go as high as $800, but at $800 it had better be the best damn portable computer I've ever used. It better make me feel like my N810 is a complete toy and a waste of money.

IMO, it should be price competitive with the N8x0's. But, yeah, if this thing ends up at $750, I will most likely buy it. I'd feel better about it being $500 though.

[Bondtastic @ May 13th 2008 12:34PM]

I think it will heavily depend on the OS. The N8x0 looks good on paper, but Maemo is annoying as all to deal with on a regular basis and the first looks at Ubuntu Mobile are far more promising.

The specs may be slow for an MID running Vista, but that should make Ubuntu Mobile and full browsing quite zippy on this thing (which can't always be said for the N8x0)

[john @ May 13th 2008 5:04PM]

Looking at the specs on the OZ site, it reveals 3 things I didn't know about this device:

1) WWAN via a card .. good, leaves open the possibility of other WWAN cards, like for EVDO, LTE, and WiMAX

2) Wifi via SDIO ... bad, unless that's a different slot than the microSD card for storage.

3) Bluetooth via USB ... bad, just plain bad, if they mean external bluetooth dongle.

If #2 and #3 are as bad as they sound, then I wouldn't be willing to pay even $500 for this thing. Much less, really.

[FRZ @ May 13th 2008 10:51AM]

I will skip this one.

[The.Mad.Cunt @ May 13th 2008 11:54AM]

"Autralian importer Tegatech's got the Gigabyte M528 up for pre-order,"

Autralia is not a fucking country.

Australia, is. Jesus Christ learn to read.

[Brian @ May 13th 2008 11:57AM]

I work for a component distributor currently, and I was looking to help a company build a UMPC with the Atom chipset, and it's not the chip itself that's all that expensive. The Chips cost about $30-40 in non-production quantities, but the supported MoBo's are the expensive part. The GPU's and other components required to run an Atom currently are what are prohibiting lower costs.

This thing is brand new, and if the trend with Intel holds true for the Atom, the price will start dropping significantly.

[palehorse @ May 13th 2008 1:25PM]

Nokia or Mac MID FTW..

[john @ May 13th 2008 5:10PM]

Yeah, a Mac MID or UMPC would be absolutely lovely.

Something like a Samsung Q1 (the one without the physical thumb keyboard), running OSX, with an iPhone and multi-touch interface and apps, but also the ability to run all standard OSX apps (so, port iPhone stuff to OSX, and run on an intel CPU, not the other way around), options for SDD storage, USB ports for physical keyboard and mouse, etc., ExpressCard slot for WWAN cards, micro-DVI port, and built-in bluetooth and wifi ... that'd be rather cool.

Could even style it like an over-sized iPhone/iPod-Touch.

[everunman @ May 13th 2008 4:55PM]

Remember this thing has a built in Hsdpa modem, they run at about us$200 so any comparisions have to take this into equation.

Any laptop, umpc or n810 doesnt

[SimonRichards @ May 13th 2008 5:50PM]

I would rather have a Lifebook U810 than this. But then this is a MID, whatever that means.

[Ypoknons @ May 13th 2008 6:31PM]

Engadget really neds to pay attention to locations where tech as a whole is more expensive (e.g. australia, eu) when doing these exchange rate conversions.At least make a note about it.

[Matthew @ May 13th 2008 6:45PM]

Too small. There's a threshold at which computers get too small and unless it has phone capabilities, why am I buying it. I have an Eee, which I love, but I'm not getting anything smaller than that. It better be a full-on smartphone. Which would make it rock.

[modern_messiah @ May 13th 2008 7:02PM]

Dear Mr. Engadget Editor:

I'm not sure if any other Aussies have replied here (as honestly I'm too lazy to read through it all) but I'd like to point out in Australia our PC gear is ridiculously over priced.

For example a bottom of the line Mac Book Pro when converted to Aussie dollars from the US sale price should come in at roughly AU$2000. HOWEVER the current price listed on the Australian Apple Website is AU$2699. So that’s roughly (and I’m being really rough here) a mark up of US$650 for an identical piece of hardware.

So whack off a fair chunk for the price of that MID and your looking a little better.

[jethro_static @ May 13th 2008 9:07PM]

I will buy 3 eee pc or 3 MSI wind or 3 Cloudbook or 2 Samsung ultra or 2 raon vega or I'll just mixed and match everything with that money.

[modern_messiah @ May 14th 2008 12:23AM]

Sorry, an edit. The $US equivalent Mac Book pro in Aussie Muhla would be roughly $2100, so a mark up of around $550.

[PalmerTech @ May 16th 2008 12:21AM]

Who would want this when they can get a Pandora for $320? http://openpandora.org/ The benchmarks on the newest prototype units can clock up to 900mhz.