[Ilugc] Re: FYI: ELCOT Student Labtop Offer
- From: siva.ilugc@xxxxxxxxx (Sivasankar Chander)
- Date: Sat Sep 6 18:21:42 2008
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Mohan <kaveraj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The registration is finally open..
http://www.elcot.in/NewStudentLaptop/schemeSpecification.php
Prices are as follows http://www.elcot.in/NewStudentLaptop/price.php
*Option 1: Fully loaded configuration*
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 1.8 Ghz T5670 processor/ 2 MB Cache / 800 Mhz
FSB/ 15.4" WXGA-TFT screen/ 320 GB-HDD/2GB-RAM/DVD multi
burner/Bluetooth/built in 1.3 MP camera/ Fireware/ 4 USB ports/Gigabyte
LAN/
Wi-fi/ 6 Cell Li-ion battery/Suse Linux Enterprise Edition 10.1 with one
year subscription/ Internal modem/ 3 year international warranty (except
for
battery - battery carries one year replacement warranty) Carry bag.
* Rs.30,497.00 (4% VAT extra) *
*Option 2: Less hard disk & less memory configuration*
The above spcification with 160 GB - HDD and 1 GB RAM. All the other
features are the same.
* Rs.28,297.00 ( 4% VAT extra)*
Seems like a good deal. But the real questions are ..
1. Who is the manufacturer.. ? Elcot had mentioned in their website that
they are evaluating both Acer and Dell. But it is not clear now who made
the
cut. The manufacturer's name is mentioned in the config as "Multinational
brand commercial grade notebook computer *Model Name: ELCOT"
I am not sure how good is that? The only thing to do is to go in person and
evaluate, I guess.
So, if any of u guys see the laptop in person, can u pls comment on the
build/manufacturer ..etc. Some photos would be good too.. i.e if the elcot
people consent.
Long bump up - probably too late for anybody thinking of buying one,
since they've closed registration last month.
Anyway, my folks ordered the higher-spec unit in July, and it finally
arrived yesterday. There's still a long backlog of orders from July - too
complicated to explain, it has to do with a lot of factors, including
the fact that Elcot is not really equipped for retail/single unit sales to
consumers. The student laptop deal was really an evolving
experiment over the last two years.
The unit is an Acer Travelmate 5720, and it's the unit that's further
away from the camera in the Elcot Firewalk Video (google for it).
Both the high-end and low-end units are the same model, with
different amounts of RAM and HD, no differences otherwise
(the Dell unit shown in the Firewalk video was not offered, since
Dell did not bid for the tender).
It comes pre-installed with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10.1
and Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (multi-boot with grub). DVD install
media (a $50 value) of SLED is provided by Elcot. Acer also
includes install media of the lame Linpus distro, but you can safely
discard it - Elcot's Suse and Ubuntu pre-installs *just work*.
Elcot has pre-installed a huge complement of useful FLOSS SW,
in addition to the base installs. The most notable is VirtualBox
from Innotek/Sun, which allows you to run multiple OSes in VMs.
Other goodies include OOo, virtually every media app for video/audio,
wxCam, etc. They've gone through a lot of hard work to ensure that
the app/driver stack actually works with the Acer HW, and I can
state that virtually everything I've tested works out of the box.
The HW - this is the real deal-maker. The CPU is a Merom Core 2 Duo
T7500 (dual-core, 2.2 GHz, 4 MB cache, EM64T, VT, XD), which is a
higher end CPU than that originally spec'ed (C2D T5670 2x1.8 GHz,
2 MB) on Elcot's website. The retail price on the T7500 is a good
$100-150 higher than the T5670. More importantly, you can run
any x86-64 distro natively, and also do HW virtualization with Xen,
VMWare, etc.
- 2 GB DDR2 RAM
- 320 GB Western Digital SATA drive
- i965GM (Santa Rosa) platform
- 1280 x 800 widescreen 15.4" TFT display
- Intel X3100 integrated graphics
- 62x DVD+/-RW writer.
- 6-cell 4000 mAH battery
- Broadcom Tigon3 GigE LAN (10/100/1000)
- Intel 3945 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Firewire
- 4 USB 2.0 ports
- 1 Cardbus slot
- 1 Expresscard 54 slot
- SD/MMC/ etc. card reader
- S-Video out
- Intel audio
- Integrated 1.3 Mpixel webcam (works out of the box with wxCam)
- Touchpad
- Metallic magnesium upper case and chassis (very light and durable)
- no visible fan intake or outlet, passively cooled by direct conduction
- heavy-duty black Nylon backpack carry case (I found it perfect for
use as a DSLR + lens carrying case)
I priced a similar config at Dell direct (Dell Vostro 1510 with 2.4 GHz/3 MB
cache C2D), and it came to Rs.46k + tax = Rs.51.7k + delivery charges.
My guess is that there's no way that Dell could have matched Acer's
pricing, which is why they did not participate this year.
As for the durability of the Acer, only time will tell - but it survived the
Elcot Firewalk test, it runs fairly cool, and it is a stock Intel Santa Rosa
platform - so I have no concerns at the moment. The build quality is
superb, and is better than high-end Tadpole Sparcbooks and Apple
Macbooks in fit and finish.
In short, a fabulous deal from Elcot, and let's hope they repeat it next
year or make it a regular annual event. Kudos to Umashanker and his
team for their hard work and execution that made this possible!
-Siva
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