Xemu writes "Inspired by Negroponte's laptop for children, the Swedish company Medison is now taking orders for their US$150 Linux laptop, the Medison Celebrity. The laptop is a 1.5 GHz Celeron M 370 with 14 inch screen, wireless network and it comes with Fedora Red Hat pre-installed."Update 2035 GMT by SM: As many readers have pointed out, the more you dig into the details of this company the more fishy it starts to seem. I would suggest any potential buyers be wary on this one.
"Aren't Fedora and Centos two totally different things?"
Yes, as are Fedora Red Hat and Fedora Red Hat CentOS.
Fedora Red Hat CentOS is my special creation. I mix the artwork of Fedora, Red Hat AND CentOS.
In this way, I can have the stability of Red Hat, the currentness of Fedora, and the lack of mandatory expensive support contracts which makes CentOS such a great option.
All of this in one distribution. You should try it. It's the next big thing. Honest.
Registration Service Provided By: Surftown Domains Contact: dns@surf-town.net Visit: http://www.support.surftown.com/ [surftown.com] Of course if you're too lazy, I've already pulled one up. The three key points: 1) Domain name registered in april 07, for a term of ONE YEAR, how many hardware companies do you know who put up a domain for 1 year? Obviously only the companies that don't expect to be in business for a second year. 2) The contacts are at hotmail. Okay, that's not good. Usually a hardware company would register itself with a DBA company name instead of a "Valdi Ivancic valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com", leaving human name contacts for administrative and technical contacts. 3) The site hoster.... Surf-net charges.99# / year....with low setup fee, smells fishy....someone's going the cheap route about their corporate site. 4) company can't afford a fax? Interesting. at least the scammer hasn't used anonymity services during registration.
Organisationsnr: Företagsnamn(firma): Företagsform: Firmatyp: Län: Status:
19 700326-2016 1 Medison Consulting E Firma 10
556525-1096 Medison Data AB AB Firma 10 Konkurs avslutad
916575-3832 MEDISON Handelsbolag HB Firma 04 Avregistrerad
969622-6852 Medison Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
969627-7657 Medison Inlärning Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
969628-2749 Medison Media Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
-----------------
Let me translate that:
Organisation Number: Company Name(firma): Företagsform: Firmatyp: State: Status:
19 700326-2016 1 Medison Consulting E Firma 10
556525-1096 Medison Data AB AB Firma 10 Bankrupt
916575-3832 MEDISON Handelsbolag HB Firma 04 De-registered
969622-6852 Medison Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
969627-7657 Medison Inlärning Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
969628-2749 Medison Media Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
-- https://snr3.bolagsverket.se/snrgate/default.jsp [bolagsverket.se]
(Search for 'medison')
--
Pictures stolen from a company named "Clevo" that is based in Taiwan. Yet they claim that they are assembled in Brazil and that they
will continue to do that until they have their manufactoring facility ready there.
--
It's a scam, nothing more to see here, move along now.
P.S
Their demand that they are/will be getting (as pointed out by a member of some other forum) will surpass the ones on Apples MacBooks, it is highly unlikely that this company from out of nowhere will be able to supply.
Among all available distributions, the company has installed Fedora, which by default does not come with installations of mplayer and other music software and libraries. This is a truly educational laptop where children will have to learn to use Linux and install software just to reach the end goal of watching porn. Finally, someone is not thinking of but thinking for the children.
First salt, then Medison, then lemon. Then you wake up in a shopping cart in a stranger's bathroom with a pounding headache, no memory of last night and no idea where your clothes are.
It's a neat looking laptop, but info on the website is pretty scarce. For instance, what kind of battery life can I expect? Is it as upgradeable as normal laptop (eg. HDD and RAM)?
Quite obviously, you read the website [medisoncelebrity.com], didn't you?
Q: Do you have other products or can I add more memory to this laptop?
A: Yes, we have other models coming up next month and if you want to expand with more memory on your laptop you can go to our 'Accessories' page and buy extra memory.
I'm having a hard time believing it's a real product, just seems to good to be true summary: seems like a decent box, upgrade ram to 1 gb and you got a deal. pricewatch says the 200 pin sodimm is going for $80ish
begin copy/paste from their specs page:
* CPU - Intel® Celeron® M Processor 370 (1.5 GHz, 90nm, FSB400, 1 MB L2 cache, uPGA478)
* DISPLAY - 14.0" WXGA (1280x768) TFT
* HARD DRIVE - 40 GB
Now that you mention it, one thing that should set off the fraud alarm is the 4-6 weeks delivery time. That's a eon in terms of modern service, but a long enough time to collect a lot of orders before anyone expects to receive their product.
I like how on the order page, the verified by Visa and Mastercard mastercode logos (which should have links from them to verify their authenticity) are just pictures on the site. Very fishy indeed.
investigate that address and there are a number of registered companies at that address, ok if it was a solicitors office not that unusual, however I couldn't find 1 which had filed accounts.
Sure, in an ideal world. My understanding is that these are going to be made and shipped from Brazil, Maybe they aren't current in their abilities?
I'm not sure whether this is generalized or not, but I live in Brazil and work at a small company that resells data acquisition and process control systems imported from USA and Europe to other Brazilian companies, and these delivery times are pretty standard for us. Now, admittedly we don't sell directly to end users (prices for these systems are too high), only to other companies, but it's really common for we to take up to 90 days to deliver a system. And the reason is simple: we rarely maintain goods in stock, only importing what has already been purchased (and paid) by our customers, and as such, to minimize shipping costs we must include in a single shipment as many purchase orders as possible.
Is perfectly possible that this company is scamming, yes. However, as you pointed out, if they aren't scammers, there are in fact good reasons for them to have these long delivery times. Not all countries, much less all companies, meet the conditions required for almost instantaneous delivery times as are common in USA nowadays.
Simply put, it's not that such delivery times are "a thing of the past", as many other posts say. It's more that the USA are years ahead of everyone else in this regards.
Because it's a domain registered in april, for one year.
Because same guy has 5 earlier "Medison something" companies registered, 2 of which are bankrupt, rest of which are "dissolved"
Because the privacy-notice is cut-n-pasted from Apple (and poorly done at that)
Because the images of the laptops are photoshopped variants of a Taiwanese laptop. (and these claim to manufacture in Brazil)
Because they claim to charge ridicolous amounts for advertising on the site ($15K - $2 million) for a site with (if you believe their own claims!) 10K hits/month or thereabout.
Because the only way to contact them is a -hotmail- adress to what appears to be a private individual.
Because even their phone is "temporarily disconnected"
Because they have no adress, no contact-info whatsoever in any of the countries they claim to operate in ?
Because they (claim to) sell at about half the price of the nearest competitor.
Because they claim it's cheap becaus they "see it from a democratic point of view" which is crap.
Because there's around 20 other fishy-smelling things, but I'm tired of listing them.:-)
If, after all of this, you still want to order one. Go for it. Oh, and I have a bridge to sell ! Send small unmarked notes:-)
Hello fellas. I came across this site, when searching for information about this computer. With that pricetag, it would be a brilliant surf & chat computer for me.
I'm a swedish student, and I found an article in a larger web-newspaper in sweden and was amazed..
Sadly though, when reading comments all over, at swedish sites, this thing starts to smell very very rotten..
The speculation is about this beeing a scam, in the same way that you've mentioned above.
There's bankrupcy issues, lies at the homepage, weird and incomplete messages from the people behind this "madison" company. The screenshots of the computer, has been found at other manufacturers. Companies, that Madison claim to work with, hasn't heard of the connection..
The things above, has been discovered by many people, at different swedish sites. Even more than that.
The 4-6 week delivery time, sounds perfect to grab as much cash as possible and run.
No-one can find anyone with an example of this computer. People doesn't believe this thing even exist.
I recommend all of you, to wait and see how everything turns out here in sweden, before you buy this. As most swedes do right now.. Wait and see if the first computers arrive at all.
I hope that this isn't a scam. I'd love to buy one. I'd love if the promised "future generation" will arrive.
Well there is an old saying. If it sounds too good to be true...
But running a scam like this out of Sweden seems like a big risk to me. But then I have no idea how good the Swedish legal system is. I thought they had some very strong consumer protection laws. It is probably safer to buy this if you live in Sweden than the US.
> The thing is, it didn't sound SO good as to be absolutely implausible...
Yes it did. I clinked to thier website and read the spec and instantly posted Scam.
Negroponte & co can't hit $150 selling much simpler machines by the million lot and as a non-profit operation to boot. This machine is supposed to have a 14" TFT HD res screen vs the oddball cheap screen on the OLPC. This machine has both a hard drive and DVD drive while the OLPC has a dinky flash drive. The OLPC is coming out of the most lowball Chinese factory in the contract manufacturing business so there are NO more efficiencies to wring out of the price to give these unknown guys a way to offer more for less.
Do the math people. When somebody offers you a new laptop for less than the display and drives cost when delivered by the shipping container while they give every indication of being a showstring operation that can't build a decent webpage or do their own e-commerce it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Scam.
Like all good scams though, it preys upon a weakness in the victim. They might be crooks but they are good con artists. FAQ question #1 was where a good percentage of/. people started WANTING TO BELIEVE so much their common sense switched off.
"#1. Q: Why is the laptop much cheaper than other laptops? A: We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops."
And you guys were all like; "Yea, everyone should be able to afford a laptop man, like it's a Right or something. The Man is just ripping us off to feed insane Corporate salaries and fat cat shareholders. These are just some hoopy froods sticking it to the System!"
If this is indeed a scam...we have been trolled. Badly. I would feel they deserve kudos for getting their fake product featured on/..
On the other hand, the fact that, within minutes of the story going live, you pointed out the scammy smell and got modded up so as to be prominently near the top of the page shows the major strength of community-driven reporting: near-instantaneous corrections and additions.
I just sent an email to their people asking if they would be willing to do a live interview to clear some of the fraud questions up. We'll see how it goes I suppose. If they agree, I will get the interview up and posted on YouTube and UStream asap.
Almost sucked me in.. until I started reading the website of the parent company.
Mind you thats just my opinion. Please feel free to read all about their other 'achievements', such as the Medison line of designer clothing (which doesnt appear on google anywhere), the awesome words of wisdom of their founder in his own blog, the un-attributed quotes, random photos of capital cities, the slightly-dithered-like-ive-been-put-through-a-scan ner-and-photoshopped company logo, and other quiet achievements such as designing the color iMac.
I love their accesories page - whats with the link to clk.atdmt.com to download a copy of 'Windows Live Messenger'. WTF ?
Anyway, in Australia, the big mining company BHP used to have a TV ad with the motto: "BHP - The quiet achiever"
But if half of their un-gogglable claims are valid, then this Medison crowd really have earned that label.
Scam, IMHO.
On the upside, if it wasnt for Medison, I wouldnt have learned that I have a new word in my diminishing vocabulary - "ungooglable".
ungooglable: A product, or a claim, a thing, or a statement of supposed fact, that when searched for on google, produces zero relevant supporting results, to the extent where serious doubts are then cast upon those same claims or facts. eg: "Johnny made several ungooglable claims about an alleged series of concerts that he supposedly performed with the El Mariachi Trio whilst on his recent holiday 'South of the Border'". Ant. un- . eg "Natalie Portman's naked butt may well be one of the most unungooglable butts never really photographed for real".
As his website says, he is on vacation in Thailand but he will consider doing an interview when he returns. He claims he knows nothing about the rampant fraud/vaporware suspicions all over the internet about this.
It's obviously a scam. You don't need to do a whois look-up or anything else. Just look at the specs.
There's no way in hell they're going to offer a 1.6GHz CPU, 40GB HDD, 14" LCD, 256MB DDR, etc., for $150... Even at twice that price ($300) it would be a stretch, but just possible. At $150, it's laughable.
You could make a $150 laptop... If you went with a tiny screen, no backlight, no CD/DVD, tiny HDD, no battery, ancient CPU, etc., etc. But with fairly modern specs as this has, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that it's real.
Yes, this is redundant, but I don't care. Every minute that Slashdot keeps this "story" up on the web page is another minute that they are providing free advertising for scam artists.
I'm sure that Slashdot's sponsors would love to know that they are accomplices to fraud.
After some light diggin thru public registers this is what I've found out about the owner of Medison.
Valdi Ivancic, born 1970-03-26, has a filed residens on Holmgatan 16F, 37138 Karlskrona. However he is also listed as living on Lundenvägen 24, 56134 Huskvarna. The Huskvarna listing also has a cell phone number for MR Ivancic, +46-76-3384142.
Whois information for medisoncelebrity.com refers to the Huskvarna address but lists another cell phone number +46-70-7572858 and also states the mans email address to be valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com.
Also residing at the Huskvarna address is one Ljubo Ivancic, born 1947-08-14, listed with a land line number of +46-36-131524 and a cell phone number of +46-70-4326089.
Neither Medison or Medison Consulting seem to be registered trademarks in Sweden.
medison.se was registered 2007-02-09 and medisoncelebrity.com was registered 2007-04-11.
Glad I read the comments. My kneejerk reaction was to go to the site and read the specs. For a moment I thought "it's on Slashdot so it's OK." I was about to call my wife and tell her she can have the laptop she wanted, and I hit the back button on my browser and started reading all the posts about this being a scam.
So the readers of Slashdot, often characterized as the great unwashed, saved me from a scam brought to me by the editors of Slashdot.
> It might take one or two weeks longer to get the laptop.
No, it might take that long (it says elsewhere 4-6 weeks plus they can shine people on for another week or two) for them to get cash from the credit card clearing house before they disappear. Add up the BOM on that machine and they can't buy those parts in 100,000 lots for $150USD. Scam.
I suspect the difference in performance will be that the ASUS laptop will be a computer, and the Medison machine will be a sad memory of 150 dollars you once had.
Fedora Red Hat (Score:3, Funny)
On my laptop, I am running Fedora Red Hat CentOS.
Re:Fedora Red Hat (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, as are Fedora Red Hat and Fedora Red Hat CentOS.
Fedora Red Hat CentOS is my special creation. I mix the artwork of Fedora, Red Hat AND CentOS.
In this way, I can have the stability of Red Hat, the currentness of Fedora, and the lack of mandatory expensive support contracts which makes CentOS such a great option.
All of this in one distribution. You should try it. It's the next big thing. Honest.
Parent
Re:Fedora Red Hat (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Sure... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure...Vigilante OS. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Sure looks like a scam. Pull up a whois on it (Score:5, Informative)
Contact: dns@surf-town.net
Visit: http://www.support.surftown.com/ [surftown.com]
Of course if you're too lazy, I've already pulled one up.
The three key points:
1) Domain name registered in april 07, for a term of ONE YEAR, how many hardware companies do you know who put up a domain for 1 year? Obviously only the companies that don't expect to be in business for a second year.
2) The contacts are at hotmail. Okay, that's not good. Usually a hardware company would register itself with a DBA company name instead of a "Valdi Ivancic valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com", leaving
human name contacts for administrative and technical contacts.
3) The site hoster.... Surf-net charges
4) company can't afford a fax? Interesting.
at least the scammer hasn't used anonymity services during registration.
My two trollish cents.
Domain name: medisoncelebrity.com
Registrant Contact:
Valdi Ivancic (valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com)
+46.707572858
Fax:
Lundenvagen 24
Huskvarna, 561 34
SE
Administrative Contact:
Valdi Ivancic (valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com)
+46.707572858
Fax:
Lundenvagen 24
Huskvarna, 561 34
SE
Technical Contact:
Surftown A/S
DNS Administrator (dns@surf-town.net)
+45.70200776
Fax: +45.70200776
Lautrupsgade 9, 1
KÿFFFFF8benhavn ÿFFFFD8, 2100
DK
Status: Active
Name Servers:
ns1.surf-town.net
ns2.surf-town.net
ns3.surf-town.net
Creation date: 11 Apr 2007 19:04:10
Expiration date: 11 Apr 2008 19:04:10
Parent
Re:Sure looks like a scam. Pull up a whois on it (Score:5, Informative)
19 700326-2016 1 Medison Consulting E Firma 10
556525-1096 Medison Data AB AB Firma 10 Konkurs avslutad
916575-3832 MEDISON Handelsbolag HB Firma 04 Avregistrerad
969622-6852 Medison Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
969627-7657 Medison Inlärning Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
969628-2749 Medison Media Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 Avregistrerad
-----------------
Let me translate that:
Organisation Number: Company Name(firma): Företagsform: Firmatyp: State: Status:
19 700326-2016 1 Medison Consulting E Firma 10
556525-1096 Medison Data AB AB Firma 10 Bankrupt
916575-3832 MEDISON Handelsbolag HB Firma 04 De-registered
969622-6852 Medison Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
969627-7657 Medison Inlärning Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
969628-2749 Medison Media Handelsbolag HB Firma 06 De-registered
--
https://snr3.bolagsverket.se/snrgate/default.jsp [bolagsverket.se]
(Search for 'medison')
--
http://www.mufjonkoping.se/medisonVSclevo.JPG [mufjonkoping.se]
Pictures stolen from a company named "Clevo" that is based in Taiwan. Yet they claim that they are assembled in Brazil and that they
will continue to do that until they have their manufactoring facility ready there.
--
It's a scam, nothing more to see here, move along now.
P.S
Their demand that they are/will be getting (as pointed out by a member of some other forum) will surpass the ones on Apples MacBooks, it is highly unlikely that this company from out of nowhere will be able to supply.
Parent
laptop for children truly !! (Score:5, Funny)
Medison? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Medison? (Score:5, Funny)
*offers spoonful of sugar*
That should help it go down.
Parent
Re:Medison? (Score:5, Funny)
First salt, then Medison, then lemon. Then you wake up in a shopping cart in a stranger's bathroom with a pounding headache, no memory of last night and no idea where your clothes are.
Parent
Wish it had more details (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wish it had more details (Score:4, Insightful)
Q: Do you have other products or can I add more memory to this laptop?
A: Yes, we have other models coming up next month and if you want to expand with more memory on your laptop you can go to our 'Accessories' page and buy extra memory.
Parent
Re:Wish it had more details (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
summary: seems like a decent box, upgrade ram to 1 gb and you got a deal. pricewatch says the 200 pin sodimm is going for $80ish
begin copy/paste from their specs page:
* CPU - Intel® Celeron® M Processor 370 (1.5 GHz, 90nm, FSB400, 1 MB L2 cache, uPGA478)
* DISPLAY - 14.0" WXGA (1280x768) TFT
* HARD DRIVE - 40 GB
Re:Wish it had more details (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
It may be fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
No phone number! (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are legit they are working really hard to seem like a scam.
Parent
Re:No phone number! (Score:4, Interesting)
Medison Europe Limited
27 Ruffets Wood
Gravesend, Kent
DA12 5JQ England
Heres the google maps link [google.com].
For a company that claims "... from Brazil to California" and doesn't even have an office in Sweden... it has to be a fake.
Parent
Re:No phone number! (Score:4, Insightful)
it has to be a con
Parent
Re:It may be fraud (Score:4, Informative)
Is perfectly possible that this company is scamming, yes. However, as you pointed out, if they aren't scammers, there are in fact good reasons for them to have these long delivery times. Not all countries, much less all companies, meet the conditions required for almost instantaneous delivery times as are common in USA nowadays.
Simply put, it's not that such delivery times are "a thing of the past", as many other posts say. It's more that the USA are years ahead of everyone else in this regards.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Informative)
- Because it's a domain registered in april, for one year.
- Because same guy has 5 earlier "Medison something" companies registered, 2 of which are bankrupt, rest of which are "dissolved"
- Because the privacy-notice is cut-n-pasted from Apple (and poorly done at that)
- Because the images of the laptops are photoshopped variants of a Taiwanese laptop. (and these claim to manufacture in Brazil)
- Because they claim to charge ridicolous amounts for advertising on the site ($15K - $2 million) for a site with (if you believe their own claims!) 10K hits/month or thereabout.
- Because the only way to contact them is a -hotmail- adress to what appears to be a private individual.
- Because even their phone is "temporarily disconnected"
- Because they have no adress, no contact-info whatsoever in any of the countries they claim to operate in ?
- Because they (claim to) sell at about half the price of the nearest competitor.
- Because they claim it's cheap becaus they "see it from a democratic point of view" which is crap.
- Because there's around 20 other fishy-smelling things, but I'm tired of listing them.
:-)
If, after all of this, you still want to order one. Go for it. Oh, and I have a bridge to sell ! Send small unmarked notesParent
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/M540V.asp [clevo.com.tw]
They say that they manufacture in Sweden, but that's a Taiwanese firm. Definitely stinky, and I wouldn't buy one.
Parent
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/ [apple.com]
vs
http://www.medisoncelebrity.com/legal/privacy/ [medisoncelebrity.com]
(for instance, check the 'kids' sections)
Parent
Re:It may be fraud (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt this is a fraud. They accept credit cards, like Visa.
Parent
Smells fishy... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/25/medison-celebr
This one looks particularly concerning:
Johan Löfgren @ Jul 25th 2007 12:02PM
Hello fellas. I came across this site, when searching for information about this computer. With that pricetag, it would be a brilliant surf & chat computer for me.
I'm a swedish student, and I found an article in a larger web-newspaper in sweden and was amazed..
Sadly though, when reading comments all over, at swedish sites, this thing starts to smell very very rotten..
The speculation is about this beeing a scam, in the same way that you've mentioned above.
There's bankrupcy issues, lies at the homepage, weird and incomplete messages from the people behind this "madison" company. The screenshots of the computer, has been found at other manufacturers. Companies, that Madison claim to work with, hasn't heard of the connection..
The things above, has been discovered by many people, at different swedish sites. Even more than that.
The 4-6 week delivery time, sounds perfect to grab as much cash as possible and run.
No-one can find anyone with an example of this computer. People doesn't believe this thing even exist.
I recommend all of you, to wait and see how everything turns out here in sweden, before you buy this. As most swedes do right now.. Wait and see if the first computers arrive at all.
I hope that this isn't a scam. I'd love to buy one. I'd love if the promised "future generation" will arrive.
But this thing doesn't feel safe.
Cincearly
-Johan Löfgren. Orebro, Sweden
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it sounds too good to be true...
But running a scam like this out of Sweden seems like a big risk to me. But then I have no idea how good the Swedish legal system is. I thought they had some very strong consumer protection laws. It is probably safer to buy this if you live in Sweden than the US.
Parent
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you know it's run out of Sweden?
Parent
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Come to think of it, maybe that should have been the first warning.
Parent
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes it did. I clinked to thier website and read the spec and instantly posted Scam.
Negroponte & co can't hit $150 selling much simpler machines by the million lot and as a non-profit operation to boot. This machine is supposed to have a 14" TFT HD res screen vs the oddball cheap screen on the OLPC. This machine has both a hard drive and DVD drive while the OLPC has a dinky flash drive. The OLPC is coming out of the most lowball Chinese factory in the contract manufacturing business so there are NO more efficiencies to wring out of the price to give these unknown guys a way to offer more for less.
Do the math people. When somebody offers you a new laptop for less than the display and drives cost when delivered by the shipping container while they give every indication of being a showstring operation that can't build a decent webpage or do their own e-commerce it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Scam.
Like all good scams though, it preys upon a weakness in the victim. They might be crooks but they are good con artists. FAQ question #1 was where a good percentage of
"#1. Q: Why is the laptop much cheaper than other laptops?
A: We see this from a democratic point of view where we believe everyone should be able to afford to have a laptop. The other reason is that we have our own plants where we assemble our laptops."
And you guys were all like; "Yea, everyone should be able to afford a laptop man, like it's a Right or something. The Man is just ripping us off to feed insane Corporate salaries and fat cat shareholders. These are just some hoopy froods sticking it to the System!"
Parent
Re:Smells fishy... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, the fact that, within minutes of the story going live, you pointed out the scammy smell and got modded up so as to be prominently near the top of the page shows the major strength of community-driven reporting: near-instantaneous corrections and additions.
Parent
IKEA? (Score:5, Funny)
take this off slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't buy or leave your credit card data. Scam. (Score:5, Informative)
Working on talking to them live (Score:5, Interesting)
It comes with a very powerful battery (Score:5, Funny)
ROOOOAAAAARR!!!
Scam (Score:4, Funny)
Mind you thats just my opinion. Please feel free to read all about their other 'achievements', such as the Medison line of designer clothing (which doesnt appear on google anywhere), the awesome words of wisdom of their founder in his own blog, the un-attributed quotes, random photos of capital cities, the slightly-dithered-like-ive-been-put-through-a-sca
I love their accesories page - whats with the link to clk.atdmt.com to download a copy of 'Windows Live Messenger'. WTF ?
Anyway, in Australia, the big mining company BHP used to have a TV ad with the motto:
"BHP - The quiet achiever"
But if half of their un-gogglable claims are valid, then this Medison crowd really have earned that label.
Scam, IMHO.
On the upside, if it wasnt for Medison, I wouldnt have learned that I have a new word in my diminishing vocabulary - "ungooglable".
ungooglable:
A product, or a claim, a thing, or a statement of supposed fact, that when searched for on google, produces zero relevant supporting results, to the extent where serious doubts are then cast upon those same claims or facts. eg: "Johnny made several ungooglable claims about an alleged series of concerts that he supposedly performed with the El Mariachi Trio whilst on his recent holiday 'South of the Border'". Ant. un- . eg "Natalie Portman's naked butt may well be one of the most unungooglable butts never really photographed for real".
Just got a text from the owner/ceo/whatever (Score:5, Informative)
Almost certainly a scam (Score:5, Informative)
Also, take a look at the address provided
27 RUFFETS WOOD
GRAVESEND
KENT
DA12 5JQ
My my, Nordic Multimedia Distribution Limited is listed as having the same address: http://www.ukdata.com/company-credit-reports/NORD
GI Finance Limited is located here as well: http://www.simplycreditreports.com/company-number
La Vida Art Limited: http://www.companiesgate.co.uk/LA+VIDA+ART+LIMITE
BYGG Invest Limited: http://www.ukdata.com/company-credit-reports/BYGG
HG Shiprepair Limited: http://www.companiesgate.co.uk/HG+SHIPREPAIR+LIMI
Also, Ken-Erik Limited is listed as having the same address: http://www.companiesgate.co.uk/KEN-ERIK+LIMITED.a
I checked google maps to see if I could locate the address: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=
Looks a lot like a residential area, either house/condo/apartment, definatley not a corporate or even industrial location.
Obvious Scam (Price) (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no way in hell they're going to offer a 1.6GHz CPU, 40GB HDD, 14" LCD, 256MB DDR, etc., for $150... Even at twice that price ($300) it would be a stretch, but just possible. At $150, it's laughable.
You could make a $150 laptop... If you went with a tiny screen, no backlight, no CD/DVD, tiny HDD, no battery, ancient CPU, etc., etc. But with fairly modern specs as this has, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that it's real.
SLASHDOT IS ENABLING SCAMMERS (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this is redundant, but I don't care. Every minute that Slashdot keeps this "story" up on the web page is another minute that they are providing free advertising for scam artists.
I'm sure that Slashdot's sponsors would love to know that they are accomplices to fraud.
Change the article, or take it down.
Mr. Ivancic (Score:5, Informative)
After some light diggin thru public registers this is what I've found out about the owner of Medison.
Valdi Ivancic, born 1970-03-26, has a filed residens on Holmgatan 16F, 37138 Karlskrona. However he is also listed as living on Lundenvägen 24, 56134 Huskvarna. The Huskvarna listing also has a cell phone number for MR Ivancic, +46-76-3384142.
Whois information for medisoncelebrity.com refers to the Huskvarna address but lists another cell phone number +46-70-7572858 and also states the mans email address to be valdi_ivancic@hotmail.com.
Also residing at the Huskvarna address is one Ljubo Ivancic, born 1947-08-14, listed with a land line number of +46-36-131524 and a cell phone number of +46-70-4326089.
Neither Medison or Medison Consulting seem to be registered trademarks in Sweden.
medison.se was registered 2007-02-09 and medisoncelebrity.com was registered 2007-04-11.
Slashdot needs a professional editor. (Score:5, Insightful)
So the readers of Slashdot, often characterized as the great unwashed, saved me from a scam brought to me by the editors of Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think I will wait to see if any laptops ship before laying down any of my money.
Re:The fine print (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it might take that long (it says elsewhere 4-6 weeks plus they can shine people on for another week or two) for them to get cash from the credit card clearing house before they disappear. Add up the BOM on that machine and they can't buy those parts in 100,000 lots for $150USD. Scam.
Parent
Re:$189 Asus Laptop (Score:5, Funny)
Parent