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Switched On: The $100 laptop challenge, eBay-style
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment: This was a big year for the $100 notebook computer, a concept popularized by the One Laptop Per Child organization for developing economies. However, not all $100 PCs are targeted toward the needy. During Black Friday, one retailer offered a $100 Compaq laptop after rebates and a Vonage VoIP phone subscription. But what can Benny get you in a portable computer if you're not buying educational aids in the millions or lining up at storefronts mere hours after polishing off the pumpkin pie? Finding the answer would require acute knowledge of the technology market, keen insight into seller psychology, and about seven solid minutes of online research at the internet's garage sale, eBay. Here were the demanding ground rules. To keep the experience as close as possible to a retail purchase, the notebook had to have a "Buy It Now" price of $100 or less. It had to be functional upon delivery (no "parts" PCs), including a hard drive and AC adapter, and had to be able to run a "modern" consumer operating system (Winodws XP or Mac OS X) with, at most, a RAM upgrade. For PCs, I used a Pentium III or Celeron as a rough proxy for this capability. Let's see how I did.
