A lot of people said that this wouldn’t be possible. Well, it turns out they were wrong. If I had to guess, even at this steep discount, this price for the old netbook must include the “usual profits”, or the reseller wouldn’t bother selling. So, it’s very possible that someone producing this at cost (i.e. substantial amount of labor by volunteers so the “usual profits” is smaller than usual) could have sold it even cheaper.

Of course, this was possible only because of the wild popularity and wide spread of the Eee PC. They didn’t sell this 7-inch model at $100 originally, and given the risks involved, I don’t think they could have. In this way, Negroponte was seriously wrong: by refusing to sell to the general market, his OLPC project lost momentum (as shown by the dismal failure of last year’s G1G1 program) and couldn’t put a $100 laptop out there before the “greedy capitalists” beat him to it.

Negroponte should have started out by marketing the XO laptop in the U.S. and Europe (I believe a lot of people would’ve bought it even at $200 or $300, if they weren’t forced to make a substantial donation in the form of G1G1) and use the proceeds to aggressively pursue R&D of future generations of XO, as well as lowering costs. At the moment, XO is at least 2 years behind in development compared to other netbooks, and with the “greedy capitalists” in the way, I don’t think the “philanthropist” has any chance: capitalism and market economy is the most efficient means of producing goods, after all.

Towards the end of my overseas trip this year, I found that Pandora’s LCD monitor loses connection at certain orientations—and this position changes over the duration of laptop’s use in a given position, perhaps due to the wire settling into a particular position under gravity and heat. I also found during the return trip (I am in Frankfurt at the moment), that the internal wireless device has broken down—good thing I always carry a USB wireless adapter with me!

Overall, this whitebook has been a singularly disappointing piece of work, starting with the battery life issue and USB device issue (which still persists to date). All of this at a higher price, shorter warranty, and worse service. I can’t say I am very satisfied with RKC computers, from whom I bought this whitebook, or MSI, who designed the whitebook.

So, for the next laptop, I am buying a name-brand, pre-built laptop (with components upgraded by me, of course). I am specifically buying Asus Eee 1000HE. It seemed very attractive in terms of the price, battery life, and overall reviews I have seen. Intel Atom processor isn’t of course the most powerful CPU around, but frankly, I’ve found recently that notebook CPUs are not really powerful enough for calculations that matter, and for calculations that don’t, well, almost any new CPU works these days. The new Eee will work perfectly for mobile computing (i.e. when I am traveling, when I am home, etc.), and when I am at my work desk, the whitebook (I am thinking about swapping the whole drives, so the name “pandora” will transfer over to the new Eee, and I will have to find a new name for the whitebook) will suffice, and when I am at elsewhere, I will have the new Eee-pandora with me. I’ve gotten used to syncing to workstations (i.e. between pandora and helen), so I’m sure this arrangement will work just fine.

P.S. Ah, yes. I am also stopping my boycott of Intel. It’s not that I haven’t heard bad things about them, but unless all the reviewers can be bought off (which I don’t think is possible to do either by Intel or Microsoft), Intel CPUs are definitely better than AMD CPUs these days. As for Intel’s business practices, I am willing to … make myself believe that it’s anti-capitalist propaganda. As for the Windows that comes bundled with Eee now, well, I am going to disagree with the EULA and see what happens from there.