$150 Linux laptop shipping?

Remember the $150 Medison Celebrity laptop, which seemed almost too good to be true? Well, it turns out that it's finally shipping...well, sort of. ZDnet's Larry Dignan was one of the many geeks seduced by the promise of a $150 laptop--he was so interested, in fact, that he went ahead and ordered one. So, what's the progress on his order? "I'm still waiting. And waiting. But my order is coming-really." Dignan has been in touch with 2Checkout.com, the online retailer that is handling the orders and has learned that "Medison has shipped a first batch of these laptops in mid-July." While that sounds like good news, it appears that Medison only shipped about 100 or so machines as part of this initial shipment and the second shipment has been delayed. "If you assume (optimistically) that Medison takes four to six weeks to ship a batch of 100 laptops your timeline will be something like forever if there are more than 1,000 orders still outstanding," Dignan points out. "Getting a laptop sometime in 2008 may be a miracle if people actually kept their orders." So there you have it, folks: it looks like the laptop isn't a vaporware scam after all. While that's good to hear, it still doesn't mean that you're getting your laptop anytime soon.

For more on the Medison Celebrity:
- see this ZDnet blog post