But for that price will it play hd games like the console? Isn't someone trying to get a word type program to work on the ps3 anyway?
Demand for sub £100 PC?
- Thread starter AdladUK
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But for that price will it play hd games like the console? Isn't someone trying to get a word type program to work on the ps3 anyway?
Soldato
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With £350-400 you can pick one up with your weekly shop with Windows and Works and infact laptops can be cheaper than that.
I don't see the demand for a sub £100 pc as someone poor enough to have to buy at that price, probably wont be able to afford the broadband and printer to make any use of it.
You can go and use a pc free in the local library in most areas.
Wrong country wrong market imo
Soldato
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my parents never bought me any of those kind of things, or their 5-10 year old equivelants
OT: good idea, but cost far outweighs the profit, and in this day and age people aren't interested in helping people, just in how much they pocket at the end of a day
You can't bank on people already having a copy so you can keep the costs down.
Also saying you can't pick a PC up for under £350 / £400? I can't mention names but a MAJOR player does, see them week in / out in newspapers - plus all major electrical stores.
Rich
Soldato
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Fair enough.
A PS3 is around twice that amount. £200 is around the price of a wii.
For £99 wouldn't you be looking at a low end athlon? And I agree with titchard, it would need at least 512mb of ram.
i thought the wii was down somewhere around 150 now.And still the games it could play are far more intensive than this thing could.
2.8GHz Intel Celeron actually. pretty low end, but there are far worse chips out there
256MB DDR memory is fine for basic tasks on Linux (or Windows 98/2000).
If people want to run XP they could buy an upgrade to 512MB for <£10
comparing a PC base unit with a games console is pretty much pointless. for the majority of people modding a games console so it can do basic PC tasks is way out of the question
okay taking into consideration what people have said... how about a range of budget gamer systems? the first one would be £149 (including vat) for:
2.8GHz Intel celeron processor
80GB sata-II hard drive
512MB DDR2 memory
7200GS 128MB pci-e graphics
16x DVD-ROM
or £229 for the above system including a tft monitor, optical mouse, keyboard, speakers etc
2.8GHz Intel celeron processor
80GB sata-II hard drive
512MB DDR2 memory
7200GS 128MB pci-e graphics
16x DVD-ROM
or £229 for the above system including a tft monitor, optical mouse, keyboard, speakers etc
Man of Honour
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Have you just watched that film in which some yanks come up with a $100 machine? (I can't remember the title.)
lol yeah... good film! it was some sort of holographic display wasn't it...
the funny thing is someone has actually developed a $100 laptop (http://www.laptop.media.mit.edu/), but I'm sure you already know that
it's the whole £99/£100 gimmick I'm going after to be honest
Dell pretty much own the low end market.
|And there is very little hope you could compete, as if your machine turned out to actually be (decently) profitable, dell would make a higher spec one for the same price (using its large buying power it could easily obtain parts far cheaper then you),
|And there is very little hope you could compete, as if your machine turned out to actually be (decently) profitable, dell would make a higher spec one for the same price (using its large buying power it could easily obtain parts far cheaper then you),
hehe okay.
if you think this PC is "crap" perhaps you should find out how "crap" some systems REALLY are.
like the 5 year old Pentium 2 Dell a large majority of families still run in their homes.
there's nothing "crap" about a £99 PC base unit that has updated tech (DDR memory, SATA hard drive etc)
and yes I would be making more than £5. but that's a complete different discussion
true to an extent yes. but Dell also has incredibly high costs to cover (employees, warehouse rent, marketing). I have none of that
I wasn't trying to become some sort of millionaire supplying a product on a global scale. It was just an idea to make some extra cash on the side with a nice website/unique product approach
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AdladUK << had to double check as had there been an "i" in his name I'd have suspected it being an anacronym of "Aldi ad UK"
My thoughts...
There could very well be a market for such a PC. I'd say it's worth performing some form of market analysis to try and ascertain whether the demand is sufficient, instead of relying on us computer geeks - we may or may not be interested, but I don't think we're representative of the general public (in terms of technological awareness).
Not too long ago there was a company that announced it was going to offer a free PC for those prepared to periodically sit through pop-up adverts. If I remember correctly, the spec of the PCs offered was hardly remarkable, but a surprising number of people registered interest. I believe the project never got off the ground, but it does show that people aren't necessarily bothered about having a high-end PC. It's not much of a step-up from a low-end PC displaying pop-ups to a low-end PC that costs less than a month's council tax for most of the country.
The marketing doesn't have to be expensive... create a web site, have a publicity stunt to generate awareness and let the punters do your advertising for you via word-of-mouth.
However, I think it would take a large company to be able to achieve this - not a sole trader. You'd need to rely on economies of scale to make this worthwhile, for everything from buying the components, to getting discounts with shipping companies. Doing it on a small scale, e.g. a couple per week (assuming you could generate the demand yourself locally) wouldn't yield sufficient returns. I can, nonetheless, imagine Google and someone like Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu and Thawte) doing something exactly like this, in an attempt to push non-Microsoft technologies. To them, it probably wouldn't even matter if the PCs themselves were loss leaders.
In fact, the more I think about this, it would be a great project to do, just in order to raise the awareness of Linux and open source software. I'm almost tempted to set up a dummy company, knock up a whizzy web site to get people hooked, post an article to /. or The Register, do a few interviews with the BBC, Wired magazine, the tabloids, etc... Then just say that the company is "reconsidering its objectives" and pull the can on the entire thing - but at least the average person on the street would then be aware of the existence of Linux/FOSS.
There could very well be a market for such a PC. I'd say it's worth performing some form of market analysis to try and ascertain whether the demand is sufficient, instead of relying on us computer geeks - we may or may not be interested, but I don't think we're representative of the general public (in terms of technological awareness).
Not too long ago there was a company that announced it was going to offer a free PC for those prepared to periodically sit through pop-up adverts. If I remember correctly, the spec of the PCs offered was hardly remarkable, but a surprising number of people registered interest. I believe the project never got off the ground, but it does show that people aren't necessarily bothered about having a high-end PC. It's not much of a step-up from a low-end PC displaying pop-ups to a low-end PC that costs less than a month's council tax for most of the country.
The marketing doesn't have to be expensive... create a web site, have a publicity stunt to generate awareness and let the punters do your advertising for you via word-of-mouth.
However, I think it would take a large company to be able to achieve this - not a sole trader. You'd need to rely on economies of scale to make this worthwhile, for everything from buying the components, to getting discounts with shipping companies. Doing it on a small scale, e.g. a couple per week (assuming you could generate the demand yourself locally) wouldn't yield sufficient returns. I can, nonetheless, imagine Google and someone like Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Ubuntu and Thawte) doing something exactly like this, in an attempt to push non-Microsoft technologies. To them, it probably wouldn't even matter if the PCs themselves were loss leaders.
In fact, the more I think about this, it would be a great project to do, just in order to raise the awareness of Linux and open source software. I'm almost tempted to set up a dummy company, knock up a whizzy web site to get people hooked, post an article to /. or The Register, do a few interviews with the BBC, Wired magazine, the tabloids, etc... Then just say that the company is "reconsidering its objectives" and pull the can on the entire thing - but at least the average person on the street would then be aware of the existence of Linux/FOSS.
The hardware is not what people are getting at, it is you throwing Joe Bloggs to Linux, OO.org and the BASH command line - how do you explain to Joe Bloggs who wants the £99 but with MS Office as his mate at work "who knows all about computers" says he should have it - how is going to understand that you need a whole new OS for that, another £80 odd quid on the price - probably think you are trying to fleece him!!
Rich
well thank you for your thoughts Gareth, and thank you for taking the time to post them.
I do disagree about you saying only a large company could pull off something like this off. I've done all the calculations and there is a worthwhile profit involved. I wouldn't have to order bulk, and there's nothing wrong with something being built from the ground up (in fact, that's usually the best way to do it)
I'm not on a Linux crusade (as it would seem you may be), but it's a nice alternative... and it's free. can't say fairer than that
I do disagree about you saying only a large company could pull off something like this off. I've done all the calculations and there is a worthwhile profit involved. I wouldn't have to order bulk, and there's nothing wrong with something being built from the ground up (in fact, that's usually the best way to do it)
I'm not on a Linux crusade (as it would seem you may be), but it's a nice alternative... and it's free. can't say fairer than that