Keepin' it real fake, part CXXVI: Jointech's $99 JL7100 rips Eee PC in spectacular fashion

The Kira 100 was a decent Eee PC knockoff, but at just north of $475, there was literally no purpose in picking it over the genuine product. The Jointech JL7100, however, really makes ASUS' darling look mighty unnecessary. Okay, so maybe the fact that this thing relies on WinCE 5.0 rather than, you know, a bona fide laptop operating system is a bit disappointing, but there are sacrifices to be expected here. As for other specifications, you'll supposedly find a 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution display, Samsung chipset, 64MB (yes, megabytes) of internal storage, 64MB (yes, megabytes) of RAM, a VGA output and three USB ports. We can hear your stifled laughter from here, but your tune may change upon hearing the $99 (USD?) price tag. Told you so.

[Thanks, Sean]

[Dillon @ Jul 27th 2008 3:52PM]

"just north of $475"

How can you have a direction on a price? A price is a scalar quantity... maybe in your head you can see prices in 3-space. but not your casual engadget reader.

[liv @ Jul 27th 2008 4:02PM]

dude... stop hating... just because Ryan is gone doesn't mean you can give Darren hell... you know what he meant...

gg Darren, keep up the posts...

[OneLove @ Jul 27th 2008 4:44PM]

He would have made more sense if he had said "First".

[greg @ Jul 27th 2008 4:48PM]

You actually only need to see prices in 2d space for there to be a north/south. If your going to make a smartass remark, at least make sense.

[youngcalihottie @ Jul 27th 2008 6:12PM]

last time i checked, if you're going north, then you're going up.

its an expression ive heard before. darren didnt just make that up. even if he did think of it on his own, its nice to read a story from a writer who doesnt just sound plain "the price was high blah blah blah."

quit hating. i dont see why people post if theyre not going to actually contribute something to the topic at hand.

along those lines... i would like to say that this product could actually be useful for simple computing needs like taking notes or browsing web pages like engadget mobile. maybe its finally a real "netbook?" i think at $99 you would also have an excellent way for a child to learn how to use a computer. **i would rather give a kid this than an OLPC.**

[Citrico @ Jul 27th 2008 5:14PM]

It's a common freaking expression. One I use quite frequently myself. And if something like that bothers you, realize that you're just being a pedantic wiener and nobody with a modicum of sense gives a crap.

[joe blow @ Jul 27th 2008 5:43PM]

This thread has headed south...

[Dillon @ Jul 27th 2008 8:36PM]

Wow, I think that's probably the hardest I've ever gotten owned on the internet. You all get a coupon for one free internet. It's on me ;).

[maveric101 @ Jul 28th 2008 12:54AM]

if you get owned that regularly, you should probably have your internet license revoked.

[switchbitch @ Jul 28th 2008 9:43PM]

@greg, north/south actually only requires 1d space.

North/south - 1d.
North/south, east/west - 2d
North/south, east/west, up/down -3d.

Also known as the x, y and z axes of the Cartesian coordinate system.

[754Boy @ Jul 27th 2008 3:52PM]

Damn $99 sounds great!

[Cagrino @ Jul 27th 2008 5:09PM]

No it doesn't. This thing sounds useless. You're giving away your $99 for repackaged obsolescence.

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:37PM]

Cagrino, nowadays people mod and brew their systems. Obsolescence doesn't really work with today's hardware.

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:38PM]

Edit: brew their ^own systems.

[ManekiNeko @ Jul 27th 2008 10:23PM]

Yeah, I already had a system like this. It was called the NEC MobilePro 770, and I couldn't do anything with it other than basic word processing. That's why I bought the Asus EEE as a replacement.

[OddManOut @ Jul 27th 2008 11:40PM]

"... the NEC MobilePro 770, and I couldn't do anything with it other than basic word processing. That's why I bought the Asus EEE as a replacement."

Mobilepro 770, huh ? I've had, by turns, a 780...a 790...an Intermec 6651...and a an HP Jornada 720. All of which were billed as laptop replacements, which none of them were. But I found them pretty useful as an electronic dictionary for my Japanese classes since I was in class 6 hours a day and they had 5+ hours of use per battery charge. I only had to charge them up every few days. I also used them at work. With the right wifi card they were pretty good for surveying wifi security (I was a sys admin at the time) and with an ethernet card they were all pretty useful for genereal network testing/troubleshooting. Pocket excel in a highly portable package with a qwerty keyboard (plus that 5+ hour runtime) made the quarterly property audit much simpler.

Kind of an eclectic set of uses I know, but these days I've got an NTT Docomo Sigmarion III that does all that, but also has a 400mhz ARM based processor (the others ranged from 133mhz to 206mhz), an ATI Imageon video DSP with 8mb of video RAM, and a VGA (or was it 800x480?) screen. Add an SDIO wifi card and a 16GB CF flash card and you can play music/DIVX rips and surf the web just fine.

Trouble is these things are out of production, cost at least $275 used, and have one of the most finicky of the WinCE.NET variants made (4.1).

For $99 this thing is a STEAL for me. And I honestly think it would meet many other peoples needs if they gave it a chance (which most probably won't). I mean, is WinCE really all that much more beyond the casual users ability than Linux is ? And at $99 I could afford to buy Softmaker Office ($75), an SDIO wifi card ($30), 16GB CF card ($50) for under the entry level price for EEE's and have a machine that does all the same things*, but that runs for 3 - 5 hours on a single charge and does so SILENTLY (no fan).

To each their own of course, but at $99, I'M totally in...



* - I am admittedly assuming it has both a CF slot and SDIO. It may have one, the other, or neither. I'm also relying on the user to know something about how to use the device, and where to download all the freeware require to bring the device up to Linux level EEE functionality. Out of the box the EEE will undoubtedly be a more capable machine...

[Rafer @ Jul 27th 2008 3:53PM]

you can buy an N64 for 7 dollars on ebay.

[nate @ Jul 27th 2008 4:06PM]

you can buy a pet rock on ebay for $7

what's your point?

[Roto13 @ Jul 27th 2008 4:35PM]

64 megs, Nintendo 64, etc. Also, $7 is too much for a pet rock.

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:18PM]

Roto, you just don't get it. Skippy is my BEST FRIEND!

[Bob @ Jul 27th 2008 10:38PM]

Uh... Didn't the "64" in "Nintendo 64" mean 64 bit graphics...?

[philos.bonacci @ Jul 27th 2008 11:07PM]

there are also many laptops on ebay for cheap as well...

[neofolklore @ Jul 28th 2008 8:10AM]

Google: "Nintendo 64 specs" + I'm feeling lucky
source: http://www.cyberiapc.com/vgg/nintendo_n64.htm

Technical Specs:

CPU: 64-bit R4300i RISC (93.75MHz) / 64-bit data paths, registers with 5-stage pipelining
Co-processor: 64-bit RISC (62.5MHz)
RAM: 4MB (36Mb) upgradeable
Graphics: Pixel Drawing Processor (RDP) built into co-processor
Colors: 16.7 million (32,000 on screen)
Polygons: 150,000 per second
Resolution: 640x480 pixels
Sound: 16 to 24-channel 16-bit stereo (up to 100 PCM channels possible)

[Matthew Hilario @ Jul 29th 2008 11:44AM]

Mariowned!

[maxz @ Jul 27th 2008 3:54PM]

Sounds pretty good. If you can add ram, install XP and get a USB stick for storage, this thing could actually be quite useful.

[matt @ Jul 27th 2008 5:14PM]

Since when has XP run on an ARM system? Can't modify that with a proprietary OS...

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:26PM]

Yeah, and even you can (and I hope you can) shift the internal storage over to operating RAM, that's still not enough memory to run XP. BUT you could have a really sweet 128MB netbook running on Puppy, Damn Small, or TinyMe under that setup. My recommend would be Tiny.

The only question is will the BIOS boot from USB on this? YES=$150* netbook party . NO=ugly, oversized pda.

*includes $50 for a nice huge usb stick

[Marxy @ Jul 27th 2008 4:01PM]

That seems great from a bang for buck point of view, but there are some major data points missing. For one, what processor does this thing use? Is it moddable? Mini PCIe ports inside for modding? Upgradeable RAM or soldered? Unfortunately, this info probably won't be available until someone actually buys it...and even then, where is it available...considering I live in smalltown Canada....

[Auras @ Jul 27th 2008 4:31PM]

If only XP ran on ARM :P

[Dillon @ Jul 27th 2008 5:06PM]

Most likely runs on a Strong ARM or MIPS processor. I'm guessing the former since it is more dominant in the portable computer/pocket PC realm.

[Eric @ Jul 27th 2008 5:31PM]

According to the Brochuer (sic), it is a 400 MHz processor, and it runs Windows CE imbedded, so I would think an Xscale or equivalent.

I'd call it more a clone of the OLPC, not the Eee.

[Syliss @ Jul 27th 2008 4:03PM]

Talk about a cheap modders dream. Yeah the cpu is only 400mhz, but linux would be fine on this. I just wonder how expensive "built in wifi" is? i hope you can add more ram, would kinda be worth it.

[barry99705 @ Jul 27th 2008 4:08PM]

Well it's running wince, so it's most likely not flashable. This is just a rehash of the old windows hpc form factor, which didn't really take off as well as ms wanted it to.

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:28PM]

Umm, wince was completely flashable, you just had to hack through activesync. This one might not even require that what with 3 usb ports, esp if it's got a decent BIOS setup.

[dsevil @ Jul 27th 2008 4:10PM]

@maxz:
http://www.jointech.com.hk/downloads/Laptop_JL7100_Datesheet.pdf
CPU & Chipset: ARM 9 Core, Samsung
So, no you will not be able to run XP on it.

Might make a decent little Linux box if it's sufficiently hackable, but I already have enough devices which run Linux and have cramped keyboards.

[Eric @ Jul 27th 2008 5:40PM]

The .pdf says "Linux Optional" So maybe not to hard.

[cjstuff @ Jul 27th 2008 4:14PM]

Hey, wow, they've re-invented the IBM WorkPad z50, which offers a bigger screen, a 90% vintage IBM-quality keyboard, and a PC-Card slot that can support a RAM drive or even an old-school removable hard drive. It ran for 8-10 hours on a standard battery, but you could also use AA batteries in a pinch. Oh, and there's been a Free BSD build for the z50 for years....

Let's see....that device came out in...1999 or so.

[jcro @ Jul 27th 2008 4:16PM]

for taking notes in class, this might be right up my alley, and for $99 bucks, even if it ends up being terrible i'm not going to kill myself over buying it

[Justin F @ Jul 27th 2008 4:30PM]

And I'll be sitting a row back, embarrassed for you.

[daddycool @ Jul 27th 2008 4:33PM]

Damn, a keeping it real fake I actually might get. At worst, it's a big PDA, but at $99 it's 80% off the price of a PDA. This is something I would get just for the hell of it. If it can at least run a decent browser, this is a no brainer for a spare or a third laptop.

[Link2877 @ Jul 27th 2008 5:00PM]

You can probably get a browser on it, but surfing the modern web with 64MB of RAM lol good luck.

[Jason @ Jul 27th 2008 5:31PM]

Been there and done that happily, and if it's like any other WinCE memory setup, then it should actually be 128MB RAM split 50/50 for storage and memory. Add your own storage and you're surfing quite happily with a lite OS and even Opera. I've done as much.

[The_Steven @ Jul 27th 2008 4:33PM]

WinCE 5.0 ? heck, my phone runs 6.0! (and I'm still waiting for the official 6.1 upgrade)

[jkr @ Jul 27th 2008 5:25PM]

your phone doesn't run win CE, it runs win mobile. They are not the same, not even close, which should be obvious be a desktop being shown in the pics above.

[JJ @ Jul 27th 2008 8:39PM]

lol you vagina, Windows Mobile 6's core is Windows CE 5.2.
Windows CE will not die yet

[Christopher Mitchell @ Jul 27th 2008 4:37PM]

Am I the only one that noticed the screenshot photoshopped onto the promo images is XP?

[Geqxon @ Jul 27th 2008 4:44PM]

It's probably Windows CE 5, Windows XP Embedded or Windows Fundamentals.

[Samboini @ Jul 27th 2008 4:46PM]

Yes, because the rest of the world don't have eyes.

[DYLAN C @ Jul 27th 2008 7:45PM]

Just because it has the bliss background doesn't mean it's running Win XP...?

It also is clearly not using the Luna theme.

People are always so quick to say "0000 ehm gee itz ze fotoshoppzzz!".

[haida1068 @ Jul 27th 2008 4:56PM]

well heck!!! $99.00!!! very kewl!! hell just use a s aPDA lol