The niche is a little larger than that, actually, and it's an entirely different one.

The target are people who need Internet access but can't afford anything better. As more and more government and other services nudge people toward the Internet, those below the "digital divide" have an increasingly hard time accessing those services.

I talked with their chairman about it, and wrote up the interview last night.

It's the one linked from the the write-up, the link about buying odd lots.

Here's my account of, excerpts from, and opinions about the interview.

It's 3,300 words long. (Yes, yes, I know, "TL; DR". :P )

It's their $349 higher-end netbook, with an Atom CPU and 13" screen. They claim they were using the name well before Microsoft started using it for their search engine.

Thank you for pointing that out.

As it happens, I will be getting a review unit of the Africa, and of the Bing, to review for TeleRead, so I will have a chance to evaluate them. It is possible that the Africa may well have better specs than the minimums promised, in which case it would be a matter of comparing the specific unit I have to what's available on that refurb site.

Well, I'm going to get my hands on review units of the Africa and the Bing so I'll see how they look in person. I can't speak to the Bing's similarity to the Mac, but I will note that I only heard of Bing a couple of months ago and I gather CherryPal was making its prior model of Bing earlier than that.

And I'll definitely be asking him about the components vs. job lots matter in the interview tomorrow. His blog post certainly makes it SOUND like components.

Of course, even if they are job lots and not hand-assembled, the Africa still looks a pretty good value. As I pointed out in my article linked from the OP, the closest thing to those basic specs is the Menq EasyPC (similar specs but less memory), and that normally wholesales at $80. Getting something at least slightly better for $99 retail seems reasonable by comparison.

Someone down-thread is talking about reconditioned Eee 7" models costing $100. I haven't been able to find anything like that for less than $250. And while my budget might stretch to a $99 Africa, it certainly won't stretch to a $250 Eee.

Please point me to where these mythical refurbished Eees can be found? I was not able to find anything for less than $250, even open-box.

I'll be writing them up for TeleRead.org. I may also post the audio of it as a podcast afterward if Seybold gives me permission.

Good question. I'll be sure to ask it when I interview Max Seybold tomorrow.

They might simply be buying a lot of different-sized cases, different motherboards, and so on.

But I'll ask about that when I interview Max Seybold tomorrow.

Because, of course, we all know that Slashdotting lasts forever, and the site will now be gone for all eternity.

Or maybe it's just that Slashdot readers have the attention span of a fruit fly. :P

Wait for the Slashdotting to die down and their webserver to come back up. Then place your order via the store on their website. They take credit cards or Western Union. Be sure and specify in the "order instructions" textbox whether you want Windows or Linux.

They were when they started shipping them, according to Max's blog post.. They could be offering anything at this point. The only thing they guarantee is that you'll get at least those minimum specs. They don't guarantee that you'll get anything better, but they say you probably will.

My gut feeling is that you'll almost always come out ahead of the minimum specs on at least one or two facets (like, you might get a better processor if nothing else, or more disk space if nothing else) just because given how prices fluctuate on parts it would be impossible for them to exactly meet the minimum without specifically trying. They would deliberately have set the minimum to be a fallback position that they knew for a fact they could always better at that price range.

And if all I want to do is surf the web, check e-mail, read e-books, and write, hell, a 2-pound Africa will be a hell of a lot better than the 8 pound Toshiba Satellite laptop I currently have. And at $100, it will be cheaper than even the cheapest iPod Touch. It's not like I'm going to be rendering Avatar on it or something.

You specify which OS you want at time of order, in the "order instructions" box. If you say "give me all Linux, please" they'll do it for you.

Windows might be more of a standardization issue. From reading between the lines in their blog post (where Max said you'd get "at least" Windows CE, but not Vista or 7), I got the feeling that you might get either Windows CE or Windows XP, depending on which OS the processor they had available that day would support.