World's Cheapest Laptop may just be the world's cheapest laptop

We've gotta admire the functional naming here. "World's Cheapest Laptop." Hard to get that one confused with the world's almost-cheapest laptop, or similar pretenders. From what we can glean from this laptop's Alibaba page, it's built by Impulse, sports an NPX-9000 model number, and gives new meaning to the term craptop when it comes to specs. The 7-inch screen is accompanied by a 400MHz, MIPS processor, 128MB of RAM, 1GB of flash storage, and a few USB ports and an SD card slot. You'll be filling up one of those ports with a WiFi dongle, and we're guessing that SD card slot will be your lifeline for storing just about everything that isn't the Linux operating system. The wholesale price is $130 US, with a 50 unit minimum purchase. $6,500 for a laptop for you and 49 of your closest frenemies? We're sold.

[Thanks, Seema R.]

[EricR @ Jul 21st 2008 11:37AM]

You know I have a 1993 B/W display PS/Note that runs Win 3.1 and does almost all the same things this one does -- a step back perhaps?

[tom @ Jul 21st 2008 11:39AM]

You get what you pay for!

I now see the beauty of EeePc. It costs a bit more, but it is well worth the premium

[Steffen Jobbs @ Jul 21st 2008 12:31PM]

"You get what you pay for!

I now see the beauty of EeePc. It costs a bit more, but it is well worth the premium"

That's why we fanboys buy Apple computers.

[brickwood @ Jul 21st 2008 12:48PM]

premium?.. that might be the rated wholesale price, but u can prob bet it can be picked up in china somewhere for $50 tops lol.

[Derek @ Jul 21st 2008 2:07PM]

Collective Soul - Afterwords. Awesome avatar man!!! LOVE those guys.

[Evan @ Jul 21st 2008 3:31PM]

Even a Windows 3.1 computer was capable of email, word-processing, photos and music - almost everything except video! 100MHz went a long way before software got as bloated as it is now.

If anything is a step back, it's modern bloated operating systems and software that do the same tasks slower on a 3GHz CPU than the lean and mean software as yester-year ran on a 100MHz CPU.

[BigD145 @ Jul 21st 2008 4:34PM]

Adobe Acrobat would run like molasses whereas 3rd party pdf readers would run smooth. I can see where this is going.

[Tezz27000 @ Jul 23rd 2008 1:02AM]

it's slower than an iphone

[neofolklore @ Jul 22nd 2008 8:06AM]

Evan, you sir need more RAM and a SSD.

[Mustaine @ Jul 22nd 2008 2:33PM]

it may be crap, but it's lowering the bar on what people will expect to pay for technology in the future.

[^ @ Jul 21st 2008 11:37AM]

i like it's price

[ben_j @ Jul 21st 2008 11:45AM]

yeah, especially the 50 unit minimum. what a deal!

[Bunson @ Jul 22nd 2008 3:38AM]

They sell these things at Costco

[autoprime @ Jul 21st 2008 11:38AM]

can it play doom?

[Mark Walton @ Jul 21st 2008 11:43AM]

Dear god why would you go there?!

[Rogue_Genius @ Jul 21st 2008 11:49AM]

Wow, that was creative.

[High Ranks make you sterile @ Jul 21st 2008 11:51AM]

Can it play Solitaire? The winking king's on the back of the deck might use too many resources.

[Jerk Face @ Jul 21st 2008 11:56AM]

I laughed. Man, you Engadget guys are haters! : )

[initialxy @ Jul 21st 2008 11:59AM]

it's a MIPS processor. you can't run windows for sure. you can run modified linux, but then Wine only works on x86. so... no it doesn't play doom (i guess).

[ethana2 @ Jul 21st 2008 12:08PM]

If they made doom for the PS2, then yes, it could.

Because 3d aside, that's what this is.

[Elora HRanma @ Jul 21st 2008 2:52PM]

@initialxy: Doom's code is open source, and it runs in any linux, no matter the platform, as long as SDL compiles for it. And it does for most platforms. So, yeah, it will probably play Doom quite right. Even with fancy graphic improvements and decent resolution.

[siostra-rana @ Jul 21st 2008 5:21PM]

@High Ranks...

What about the skiing game with the monster/robot. Just when I thought I was about to beat the damn thing, the monster/robot always came out for me

[nanobis @ Jul 22nd 2008 10:17PM]

forget doom, whay about crysis,

on second thoughts, can it emultate a nes

[Kespar @ Jul 21st 2008 11:42AM]

my xda has to have more processing power than that...

...and it can play doom.

[Waseem @ Jul 21st 2008 11:44AM]

Does it blow up, too? Like them, the Sonys?

[Oinquer @ Jul 21st 2008 5:09PM]

eee pc 701 its well worth over that!
Not EEE PC 901...lol

[Kespar @ Jul 21st 2008 11:51AM]

how can you say 128mb ram is not luxurious..?

look at it this way,. its twice as luxurious than if it had 64 mb.

pshh macbook air.

50 x "worlds cheapest laptop" please

[Pochi @ Jul 21st 2008 11:57AM]

lol LUXURIOUS

your comment cracked me up badly

[Bradley @ Jul 21st 2008 12:10PM]

Why are you all complaining about having to buy 50 of them for $6,500?

Look at what all you get!

6,400MB RAM
50 1 GB HDs (1 gig each)
150 USB ports

Yeah... I'm stretching here.

[Down @ Jul 21st 2008 12:26PM]

Don't forget about the 19,200,000 pixels, which should come in very handy! (literally)

[John @ Jul 21st 2008 12:42PM]

wow, except for the combined pixels of all those displays if you combined all 50 into one computer that would still be a pretty bad deal, for $6,500. I mean, 6.5 gigs of RAM would probably run you around $400, the combined 20 GHz of processing power could be covered by two quad core processors that would run you maybe $1,000... the USB ports you could daisy chain for probably $300. So I guess the case and screen run you the other 4.8k...

[rkls @ Jul 21st 2008 1:36PM]

"6.5 gigs of RAM would probably run you around $400"
-john

Where do you get your ram? You can get 8 GB of ram from Newegg for under 200!

[John @ Jul 21st 2008 2:38PM]

I priced mine off newegg, but minimized the slots used, so that includes the cost of a 4 gb stick.

[Takashi @ Jul 21st 2008 11:56AM]

Hey guys, remember when we were going to have an 100$ laptop?

[EricR @ Jul 21st 2008 11:57AM]

wHY wOULD aNYONE cAPITALIZE eVERY wORD?

[ethana2 @ Jul 21st 2008 12:15PM]

OCD

[Amerist @ Jul 21st 2008 4:14PM]

A woman I work with does that and it drives me crazy. I once offered to fix her broken keyboard. She says "but my keyboard is working fine..." and I told her that her caps lock key is stuck on. She admitted that she doesn't like to turn it off long enough to send an email because she goes right back to work that requires her to use CAPS LOCK. Oh and she also uses a 19" flat panel monitor at 800x600 and which makes me want to cry every time I see it.

[agrabren @ Jul 21st 2008 4:17PM]

He Was Proving That The Shift Key On His MacBook Air Still Worked.

[Sam Zebian @ Jul 21st 2008 12:03PM]

wow talk about crap 128mb of ram??? I haven't seen a pc come with that amount since what, 2002? 512mb of ram and I'm sold.

[Zach @ Jul 21st 2008 1:13PM]

512mb of ram generally (unfortunately) brings along a price tag of 512$. though, i'm not quite sure why in god's fucking name that is, since..

an atom, 512 of ram (even 1/2gb is cheap enough these days) an 80gb hd, and a 10 inch screen with wifi etc shouldn't cost us 549!!

what do you guys think the actual cost of these laptops are to build? someone should do that isuppli shit they did for the iphone, because i doubt it's too much over 200$ to build one of these (not this one, i mean the eee & cousins).
if they actually sold them for less then 300, i'd have bought one. but this is ridiculous.

[Slick @ Jul 21st 2008 4:06PM]

@ Zach

You do get that even as technology becomes cheaper due to it being older, there is still a line where prices will not fall below due to cost of production right?

[Samboini @ Jul 21st 2008 12:09PM]

If you're an Apple fanboy you're a twat. If you're a wind-up merchant you're a twat. Either way, you're a twat.

[Samboini @ Jul 21st 2008 12:10PM]

That was directed at Ocean; comment reply shat itself.

[ethana2 @ Jul 21st 2008 12:13PM]

It does that.

[Benson @ Jul 21st 2008 7:34PM]

It does for those with no counter-measures, anyway.

[ethana2 @ Jul 21st 2008 12:12PM]

I'm with you. Gotta have my 1440x900 screen. Most of these are like a third of that...

And getting more than one simply doesn't accomplish the same thing as getting a better machine, like this $1020 ($870 after gotapex coupon) inspiron 1420n

[ethana2 @ Jul 21st 2008 12:15PM]

Way to go, engadget comment system!
*golf clap*

[Kespar @ Jul 21st 2008 12:18PM]

yeah, it does that.

[Benson @ Jul 21st 2008 7:36PM]

It does for those with no counter-measures, anyway.

[andreykireev @ Jul 21st 2008 12:13PM]

for 130 bucks, i could find many uses for this thing!
- In-car GPS - 7" screen is perfect
- PMP
- A remote control for my fancy HTPC over vnc & wifi
- Disposable Kids Laptop (ages 2-5)
- Folio?!
- add your own..