Engadget has obtained marketing materials indicating that the CVS pharmacy is going to stock a $99 Sylvania-branded Windows CE netbook, and a $179 “LookBook” color e-book reader.
From the illustration, the Sylvania looks like yet another rebranded cheap Chinese smartbook. If it’s similar to some of the ones I found while searching for other cheapie netbooks, it probably won’t even be able to install new Windows CE applications so will be limited to what’s already installed.
And of course, the savvy consumer will recall that you can get significantly more able refurbished Eee Linux netbooks for only about $50 more from Geeks.com—a couple of years old, but still capable of doing a lot more than a WinCE not-so-smartbook. (Or, for that matter, you can get some refurbished Augen Windows CE devices for $95 from Geeks right now—if you feel like throwing your money away.)
The LookBook will have a hardware keyboard, 512 megs of storage, an 8-gig SD card slot, and access to the Kobo e-book store. Physically, it looks very similar to the $100 e-book reader that Kmart was offering. It’s a little hard to see how they expect to sell very many of those, given that the e-ink Kobo or wifi Kindle are considerably cheaper, and (arguably) easier on the eyes.
Still, I suppose you could say that the devices showing up in discount stores like Kmart and CVS is a sign that the devices have finally “made it”. After all, these stores wouldn’t stock the devices if they didn’t think they’d appeal to their clientele.
(Found via our sister blog, Gadgetell.)
