Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Bramley Laptop

fake high spec laptop
  (+9, -3)
(+9, -3)
  [vote for,
against]

Bramley laptop costs about £20.00, but looks like a top of the range Macbook, and is used for hanging out in coffee shops and pretending you're really cool.

You can sip cappuccinos all day and make believe you're getting tons of email; writing up your latest screen play etc, when all the time there's just a projected loop of balderdash playing on the screen; there is no expensive processor or "real" usb ports, dvd drives etc that would add to the price, and the keyboard is connected to absolutely nothing.

There is of course a simple radio that can be enjoyed through headphones.

Comes pre-programmed with your choice of gobbledegook.

xenzag, Oct 02 2010

P-P-P-Powerbook! http://knowyourmeme...mes/p-p-p-powerbook
This is even more low end. [DrWorm, Oct 02 2010]

The Long Version http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/
[Grogster, Oct 03 2010]

[link]






       A *stock* top of the range Apple laptop is *not* cool (trust me on this one). The cool kids have casemods. Laser engraving is an absolute minimum.
mouseposture, Oct 02 2010
  

       Brilliant! I want to pass them out as party favors. [+]
Grogster, Oct 03 2010
  

       The thing is though, you actually could make a computer for that much. It wouldn't be high-specification but it could be done, so why not actually do it instead? I have a Jupiter Ace which cost me thirty quid back in 'eighty-four. I could take the PCB out of that and find a way (no, i don't know how) of plugging it into an LCD picture frame, and i'd have a free laptop. Nineteen kilobytes of memory but still useful to some extent.
nineteenthly, Oct 03 2010
  

       I wondered why my new laptop has laser engraving all over it. It seems like a great way to trap a lot of grime and oily fingerprints, to me.   

       I had something similar to the idea, called a EEE-PC. Waste of space.
infidel, Oct 03 2010
  

       I have one of those that I take when I'm travelling, and I find it quite good.
xenzag, Oct 03 2010
  

       //you actually could make a computer for that much//   

       That's what I was thinking. You could include roughly the same functionality as a cheap mobile phone and at least have something useful. I don't think you can contrive a way of faking a computer that would be cheaper than very low spec but real computer.   

       // I had something similar to the idea, called a EEE-PC. Waste of space//   

       Not so. You can't play modern games on them or watch DVDs, and even having a few flash heavy websites open at once can make them chug a bit, but they are useful. For work purposes they generally do everything you need like email, word processing etc. And they are genuinely portable, something which most laptops only pretend to be. They are also about half the price of normal computers.
Bad Jim, Oct 03 2010
  

       They also run Linux instead of the crap virus ridden windows.
xenzag, Oct 03 2010
  

       A digital photo frame attached to a shoe mounted digital camera.
marklar, Oct 03 2010
  

       Back in the day, the lowest prices of micros dropped from say five hundred quid for a PET 2001 to fifty quid for a ZX81 five years later, then they didn't get any lower. Granted they're a lot cheaper per power now, but the actual lowest price never got below that of the MC-10 or the ZX81, and it could, but it never does. I want a contemporary ZX81 equivalent, i.e. something which can do what that did multiplied by the advances made since.
nineteenthly, Oct 03 2010
  

       The main reason they don't make really cheap computers now is that you can go on Ebay and buy old computers for fifty quid.
Bad Jim, Oct 03 2010
  

       I made the mistake of being an early adopter with the EEE-PC. It only had 4GB of HDD space. Nice for travelling, but about as useful as a hip pocket in a jockstrap.
infidel, Oct 03 2010
  

       Ahh. I bought a netbook last year with Windows XP, 128GB HD, !GB RAM and a puny but functional Atom processor. If I remember correctly the HD of the EEE-PC had grown to 64GB and I think there was a Windows version.
Bad Jim, Oct 03 2010
  

       I'm typing on a 64 bit Athlon (one of their first 64 bit processors) with 512 megs of memory. It's useless for anything beyond internet and office. When I get up to 25 browser tabs or 15 plus MS Ofice it slows to a crawl. I tried it with the latest Linux with no improvement in performance. I can't imagine using a less powerful machine.
Voice, Oct 03 2010
  

       //It's useless for anything beyond internet and office//   

       Ah, but it is still somewhat useful for internet and office. You could still hang out in a coffee shop, with a similarly specified laptop, actually checking your email and actually writing a screen play instead of merely pretending to.   

       Also, consider a RAM upgrade. Your processor isn't that bad.
Bad Jim, Oct 03 2010
  

       If you have a netbook you can remote desktop to the office and do some real work.
marklar, Oct 03 2010
  

       I used to leave the office and go to the coffee shop round the corner with a laptop to escape the ennui. I could even still reach our WiFi if the wind was in the right direction. Someone actually looked under my desk once after I saved some files to the network because they thought I was hiding in my office.
marklar, Oct 04 2010
  

       Apricot, anyone?
Baked? 'sOK. Baked Apricots are nice, too
Dub, Oct 06 2010
  
      
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