Medison Celebrity: Swedish company offers laptop for £77

By Rory Reid on 26 July 2007, 10:46am

Swedish manufacturer Medison has announced a laptop costing an insanely low £77. Yup, we find it hard to believe too and we certainly suggest you take this with a pinch of salt. But if genuine, this level of rock-bottom, bargain-basement cheapness is unprecedented for consumers -- and knocks the £200 Asus Eee PC into a cocked hat. It even gives the $100 One Laptop Per Child XO a run for its money.

According to the Web site, it's called the Medison Celebrity, and it consists of a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 256MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, all wrapped up in a 14-inch widescreen chassis. Barrel-scrapingly low specs for sure, but in theory powerful enough for emailing your gran and ogling at people who don't understand the privacy settings on Facebook.

The Celebrity apparently doesn't include any version of Windows, however. It's hardly a surprise -- XP Pro can set you back around £200. Instead, Medison offers a 'specially customised' version of Fedora Linux and some pre-installed open-source software.

We'll take eight dozen. -Rory Reid

Update: Several readers have contacted us, suggesting that the offer may be a scam. We contacted Medison for more information and received this reply:

"Thank you for writing! First of all: the offer is geniune, and the laptop certainly exists! We are aware of the ongoing debate on various on-line forums about whether this is a scam or not, but hopefully everything will be clarified really soon. For instance, we will arrange a press conference in Sweden within a few days to address any doubts and questions regarding our authenticity."

Hopefully we'll be able to get a review unit in soon and we'll keep you posted. As always, we recommend you wait for our full review before parting with any cash.

Update 2: Medison held its promised press conference on 3 August, Computer Sweden reports. Our colleagues at Crave US, who have ordered a Celebrity, are still sceptical. The firm's executives were apparently rather vague on details over shipping and supporting the product. We're still waiting for a review sample.