Sylvania to offer rebadged MSI netbook, the Clone Wars begin again
Wow, a market that didn’t exist a year ago is starting to remind me of the huge “IBM PC” clone industry of the 1980’s. Take Sylvania’s newest netbook for example, which follows their re-badged Cloudbook offering a short time ago. The new MAGNI is an MSI Wind with one key difference: it has a Sylvania logo on it. It should hit the market by year-end and initial reports indicate few, if any, changes in the hardware. One tidbit of note: Ubuntu Netbook Remix will be an operating system option as will Microsoft Windows XP.I’m sure this is a nice deal for MSI, but I’d rather see the company focus on getting more units off the production line, especially the ones with the six-cell battery. Or at least get some of the larger capacity batteries out for sale.
my guess is it will be just the 3-cell, Sylvania wont take any extra measures to satisfy their customers as they are only a rebadger company.
it probably wont have a synaptics touchpad either. that is the single reason i havent bought a Wind, the knock-off touchpad they are using now is horrible. i have never seen a company screw up a launch as MSI has, from the lack of batteries, bait & switch, price changing, touchpad switching, etc.
my guess is the only reason Kevin got a 6-cell Wind with synaptics is because it’s actually a 3-cell unit with a 6-cell battery added afterwards by the importer.
I clicked on the “clone industry” link and found myself hoping to see pictures of old computers. Is this… something I should be asking myself serious questions about?
If this rebadge, like the others, is cheaper than the MSI offering, I might pick one up along with a 6-cell down the line.
Begun, the clone wars have.