Tailor-made Laptops

A fully equipped Core 2 Duo for 145,000Rs!

Just after we did our Core 2 Duo article and said that 'you'll have to wait until the prices fall and wait till the processors hit this part of the globe', lo and behold we get an email saying that Core 2 Duo is available in Sri Lanka. And not only that it's available in laptops!

Hold on to your shoes because the story gets even sweeter. You get a full and complete Core 2 Duo system for 145,000Rs! At first we were thinking, right sure, this is surely a scam. Or maybe they're shifting laptops illegally and avoiding the taxes? But no, when we met Nishan Sembacuttiaratchy the CEO of Securis Solutions - a small off shoring web designing company - we saw that this guy was for real.

He came with a nifty laptop with widescreen WSXGA+ resolution, nVidia GeForce 7600 Go 256MB graphics card and also a fingerprint reader that's compatible with Windows XP. The laptop even had a PCI Express card reader! (We had to put a little effort to hold our jaws from falling but still the sensation of a legal laptop with the very latest technology at a price that low was mind boggling)

"My Core Duo laptops start at 115,000Rs," says Nishan. "and we also give a full one year comprehensive warranty where we come to your doorstep and fix any problem" True they don't offer the licensed Microsoft Windows XP, you'll have to go to Microsoft Sri Lanka and buy that for another 15,000Rs. But they say that they can also offer that as well with the added cost if you want.

Custom built

The reason the laptop is so cheap according to Nishan is because they only take a little margin for the deal and also because they import OEM machines from Taiwan. And because of this the user can choose their own Processor, Memory, Optical Drive and Hard Disk making it a sort of tailor-made laptop.

The assembling is done in Taiwan according to specifications and not here, so according to Nishan the parts of the notebooks are more reliable and less probable to be tampered with.

A dream to be shared

"My dream was to sell a laptop at 70,000Rs," says a willful and determine Nishan. "And already I am selling an Intel Celeron at 83,000Rs. If I can get a tax reduction I can further offer it to about 70,000."

Nishan had been to both BOI and ICTA to get a favorable tax consensus but so far the efforts were not rewarded. We at CyberRealm acknowledge ICTA's efforts to give out desktops at very low prices but we value a thousand times more the effort of intelligent entrepreneurs like Nishan's efforts to give away the latest in technology at an affordable price. (The word affordable here is definitely and understatement.)

"Today's market is a rapidly changing one and the dealers have a hard time coping up with it," says Nishan. "For example the prices at Intel for Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are the same. But we all know that the technology is way better in the Core 2 Duo. So dealers involuntarily sell the Core 2 Duo at a larger price."

The reason we are stressing this so far is that the ICT development in Sri Lanka depends on the affordability of the resources. For example if more people use laptops the urgency to create Wifi hotspots will emerge. When Wifi happens that means people are connected to the Internet. And that is will be the first step towards an e-Sri Lanka. In reality all the policies designed can only be implemented after that stage.

Features of Core 2 Duo available for 145,000Rs

2Ghz Merom CPU

512MB DDR II RAM

80GB SATA

7600 Go 256MB VGA

DVD Multi-burner

4 in 1 card reader.

Fingerprint scanner with TPM 1.2

Wifi (A,B,G)

Hi-Definition Audio

Firewire

3 USB, 1 TV out

15.4 inch Widescreen monitor (with WSXGA+ hi-resolution)

1.3 Megapixel built-in webcam

PCI Express slot