The $99 "Bits and Pieces" CherryPal Africa Netbook

[Robotech_Master]

I started a thread about this over in the "Which One Do I Buy" reader forum, but upon searching the site and finding no other mentions of the CherryPal Africa, and after I researched the CherryPal further on my own enough to write a TeleRead article, I thought I would post about it over here. Because a $99 retail netbook is news no matter how you look at it, and you can read e-books on it too.

And I find their manufacturing model really interesting. Instead of standardizing on a single design, CherryPal buys odd lots of whatever parts it can get least expensively, puts together the best netbook they can out of that, and calls it the Africa. They guarantee a minimum level of performance on their website, but depending on what parts they have available you might get more.

It's like what home-builders do to craft their own beige boxes, but on a much larger scale. I think that's pretty neat.

[Nate the great]

I bought one. I've always wanted to buy one of Woot's bags of crap. This is about the same.

[Robotech_Master]

Do you mean to say you already know it's a bag of crap?

I hope you'll review it when it arrives. (How long is it supposed to take to arrive, BTW? Depending on whether I can wheedle a review copy for TeleRead out of them, I may just end up buying one myself.)

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Do you mean to say you already know it's a bag of crap?

I hope you'll review it when it arrives. (How long is it supposed to take to arrive, BTW? Depending on whether I can wheedle a review copy for TeleRead out of them, I may just end up buying one myself.)

Perhaps I got the name wrong, but I was thinking of how Woot every so often has a mystery bag sale. You don't know what you bought until after the package arrives. I thought they called it "Bag o' crap".


Shipping was about $19, and was called "Air Express". I'll let you know when I have an arrival date.

[Robotech_Master]

I been Slashdotted!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/0...d-Lots-Netbook

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Perhaps I got the name wrong, but I was thinking of how Woot every so often has a mystery bag sale. You don't know what you bought until after the package arrives. I thought they called it "Bag o' crap".


Shipping was about $19, and was called "Air Express". I'll let you know when I have an arrival date.

The mystery sale item at woot.com is infact called a bag o' crap.

[mrscoach]

BOC! BOC! I want a BOC.

I've never been able to get in on the BOCs. *pout*

[Robotech_Master]

Incidentally, I'm going to be interviewing Max Seybold, chairman of CherryPal, on the phone tomorrow.

Anybody got any questions I should ask him?

[DawnFalcon]

Where did he get the concept of the Africa from?

[Robotech_Master]

I've just written 3,300 words over at TeleRead on my interview with the chairman of Cherrypal (the "p" is not capitalized, by the way) and my opinions thereof.

It's a very interesting paradigm he's selling the things under. Not as computers, per se, but as an "appliance" for accessing the Internet.

http://www.teleread.org/2009/12/24/c...-talks-africa/

[Blue Tyson]

Yes, good one RM.

[Renaldo]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

And I find their manufacturing model really interesting. Instead of standardizing on a single design, CherryPal buys odd lots of whatever parts it can get least expensively, puts together the best netbook they can out of that, and calls it the Africa. They guarantee a minimum level of performance on their website, but depending on what parts they have available you might get more.

It's like what home-builders do to craft their own beige boxes, but on a much larger scale. I think that's pretty neat.

This is also pretty much how Yugos were made. Not such a good idea all the time.

[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I bought one.

I'm going to be getting review units of the Africa and the Bing within about a week or so. I will be reviewing them for TeleRead, with lots of photos and unboxing videos. I hope you will review yours as well.

It's a funny thing: I'm seeing a lot of skepticism about these devices on Twitter, in blog comments, and so on. People seem to be having a hard time accepting that they can exist and aren't some kind of scam or something. I guess it's the low price point.

Oddly enough, there was similar skepticism about the original Cherrypal desktop computer a year ago.

[Nathan Campos]

Hmm, I saw one of these 99$ netbooks for sell, but I don't know where...

[Nate the great]

I'm beginning to be perturbed with this company. I bought the laptop on Monday the 21st, and I still have not received a shipping notice. Nor has Cherrypal responded to my emails.