Problem is that its a prototype for a design atleast 2yrs old. You can find Acer laptops and even HP machines for 10k less with pretty much the same specs. So would you rather buy a branded machine or a taifa? If you were to design a phone now dont base it on the specs of the iphone 3g. Optical storage is pretty much dead. Removing that alone cuts 3k of the price of the device. That space could be better served putting in a type C USB port. Now that would have been a game changer.
Ofcourse someone owns the VAIO brand and that might be a clash. you cant be sure though.
Its a starting point or we will never do anything. People think that you can wake up one day and come up with an iphone 6 plus or a BMW X6??? It takes a hell of a sweat and many expert people to make even a marketable transistor radio. There is a reason apple, samsung and others have thousands and thousands of the best working for them for decades.
If we want to build a twelve lane highway, we have to learn to build a two lane first.
For an engineer to come up with something good, he has to learn time and again and again. + time to add innovations and get other talentedpeople interested.
Even when apple started, IBM had done that shit. Samsung started after sony, apple and all. It doesnt come easy.
1 Like
Kwanza they probably outsorce more than JKUAT. The wazungus make designs and give them to Chinese and a finised product is shipped back and money is paid. There are hundreds of suppliers.
VAIO notebooks were stylish and cool. Problem was their cost. Those designs…wacha tu.
Asus ROG and even Alienware got ugly designs but still costly
True. Making ugly designs maybe lends a bold and rugged image, a semblance of power.
Wanataka kuturudisha enzi za “clone”
Hizo lable mingi on top watoe…watumie at least engraved logo on one side…
Kama ndio wame design cover they shud atleast have something sleek.apealing
Kitu kaa hii[ATTACH=full]7192[/ATTACH]
Kama uko kwa hiyo team ilimake hii kitu, congratulations.
Step in the right direction lakini correction lazima.
Since ni prototype, tunawapa room for improvement.
Hiyo bei naeza pata i7 nayo
An i5 Dell goes for much less. And is more trusted.
First-mover advantage.
It cant be Kenyan made if it still has the words intel and SATA…correct word is assembled…
This is a great step in the right direction. Now what we lack in africa is leadership from the governments we have. Its so easy to turn this venture into a mega business earning Kenya billions of dollars in foreign exchange. How you ask? Simple. The government ought to have noticed this innovation and sought to support it. To grow these economies to the next level governments have to actively support local innovation abd manufacturing. What these innovators need is capital injection now. They have the product. The govt shoud make an order of about 1000 machines to be distributed to various learning institutions. It will cost less than 50 million. This money will give the innovators much needed morale boost to further develop and improve their machine. Then the government gives them a deal to develop custom made laptops say for their standard one kids project that they pledged. These billions will be used in kenya rather than enrishing foreign nations by buying from them. Soon this company will be supplying orders all over africa and the world and will be able to employ the best of the best. The government forms the first support to start ups. Even the president said in his madaraka speech that as a policy 40% of govt procurement will be for locally manufactured products. If these start ups rely on citizens for initial support they will always fail because you and me want to buy known reliable products mostly foreign due to our limited resources as individuals. With govt its different. Same thing should be done with that mobious car
2 Likes
I used to assemble computers when I was in campus…buy seagate hard-drive, buy samsung RAM, buy the zenith motherboard, buy a random fan, buy dell casings, get an appropriate Power Supply Unit from an old computer and finish off with a hp 17" monitor… sometimes change heat sinks, processors etc etc. That’s why I am not enthused by a lackluster announcement of a laptop with a stupid logo from what is supposed to be an institution of high repute. I hope this news doesn’t get published beyond Kenya.
2 Likes
Exactly. I see no innovation in a university doing what common Kenyans have been doing for ages- assembly. The only original thing is the plastic casing which doesn’t look any good.
I imagine even the booting screen hasn’t been customized in any way. Afathari mimi nilichange start screen ya my Scantech decoders, na university naionanga nikipita thika rd.
1 Like
People who repair laptops in town must feel like geniuses having been doing what JKUAT has done for years now. This would be good news if it was coming from a local start-up company headed by fresh graduates. But a University??? Especially one that is supposed to play a role in Kenya similar to that which the MIT plays in the USA? It tames our expectations on the level of technological innovation we are going to get from institutions of higher learning. It’s disappointing that Kenyans are wanking to this piece of news.
2 Likes
A clone laptop is even worse than a clone desktop
For those playing down this innovation as a mere assembly and what not, let it be known that you cannot reinvent the wheel rather you rework it to become more efficient, reliable, adaptable to your unique requirements or conditions and be produced at much cheaper cost. You guys are rather short sighted. You see, these innovators cannot discover a computer or many of its components as its already been done. They can however rearrange it to meet certain targets or requirements as needed such as efficiency and do so at a cheaper cost. This rearrangement is the innovation otherwise everyone would be coming up with a laptop every week if it were so easy for even laptop repairmen to handle. More importantly in this is the potential. The wide array of products that such encouraged innovators can come up with from phones to cameras to biometric readers to medical equipment all of which government and citizens require. The trick is not that you manufacture a product from A to Z. A product contains hundreds of components which are supplied by different companies that specialize in specific components. The trick is to have them manufacture and sypply those components according to your specifications based on your design. Now, those suppliers maybe based in different countries some in kenya others in europe asia americas or africa. That is innovation
1 Like
True. the chinese and koreans arent discovering anything new na vyenye tunatumia products zao.
1 Like