Balance Ultra-cheap notebook

Walmart and Linspire to sell a laptop for just under $500.

You'd think I'd be a huge advocate for this product. I'm not.

This has Atari ST written all over it. I say this for a number of reasons:

1. Conventional marketing wisdom: this is a cheaper machine that, on paper, is functionally the middle of the market.
2. Like the Atari home computer the people really driving this have no real understanding of the marketspace or the technology.
3. While the machine has a certain appeal to DIY types, for the most part the product seems cruddy.


I am distressed but not surprised to see computing technology companies make the same mistakes over and over again.