
Xiaomi laptop leaked online with specs - dynjo
http://www.gizmochina.com/2014/12/28/xiaomi-laptop-leak/
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tptacek
Isn't this the company that released press photos of a phone whose camera ---
the actual supposed real-life physical camera --- was the _icon from Apple 's
photo app_?

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JohnTHaller
Indeed it is: [http://i.imgur.com/POklTmJ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/POklTmJ.jpg)

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dstaley
This is just a laptop from an unknown Chinese OEM with a Mi logo (poorly)
Photoshopped onto it. [http://www.kakatech.com/i5-14inch-
laptop-k18/](http://www.kakatech.com/i5-14inch-laptop-k18/) The source of the
rumor is Gizmochina, which has basically no reputation for authenticity
whatsoever.

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sah88
Have ear buds from Xiaomi and been very impressed with quality for price. I'm
somewhat sceptical they are going to put a $400 dollar cpu and 16gb of ram
into a laptop that costs under $500 dollars though. Maybe they are getting a
good price on the haswells now that broadwell production is ramping up.

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moca
I have used several Xiaomi products (phone, box, MIUI). I can say their
product design and quality are very good. Obviously, they copied hardware
design from Apple, but they have proved that they can build high quality
products at very low prices, and they are selling phones, tablets, TV boxes,
real TVs, earphones, routers. Very few companies in the world can achieve it
(Google tried it and didn't go anywhere, remember Nexus Q). It is only matter
of time Xiaomi to catch up on their original design capability.

For reference, Smartisan T1 had very good product design. It was done by a
English teacher founder with less than $20M funding. All it took was to find a
good design firm to help out. While I don't like their copycat, but they are
very likely to succeed in the long run.

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sabalaba
Big +1 on the Smartisan (锤子). I really like their interface. The Smartisan OS
is one of the most thoughtfully and beautifully designed Android systems that
I've seen.

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ayrx
I'm willing to bet that this (at least the stated price) is completely fake.
There is no way that laptop can sell for $480, that won't even cover the cost
of the components. Heck, that processor alone probably costs $200 from Intel.

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Shad0w59
Leaked with high specs and low price to build hype.

Actual announcement will be a lot lower spec.

Common tactic.

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ztratar
No way the price can be that affordable for those specifications; the OEMs
would either be getting screwed or Xiaomi is making close to nothing on each
machine.

I would find the latter plausible if they weren't already set to dominate the
market upon release. This would simply be a move to assert brand dominance and
squeeze everyone else out of the market.

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chmars
Xiaomi doesn't have to factor in IP rights and R&D, that keeps costs down. I
doubt, however, that "stealing" from Apple is a viable business model in the
long term.

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kristofferR
> doubt, however, that "stealing" from Apple is a viable business model in the
> long term.

It's a fantastic way to "bootstrap" a business though.

~~~
curiously
Xiaomi is just learning from Samsung's page.

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mobiplayer
You seem to have been downvoted because people forgot how every Samsung phone
was an iPhone rip-off on one way or another. Also their first tablets and even
the use of Apple icons at their shops decorations.

It may not be anymore and that's the point of the comments thread: Great way
to bootstrap your business. Once up and running with profits you can go your
own way.

~~~
curiously
Samsung made enough cash to settle eventually.

Xiaomi? Won't survive the US market attacks from the incumbents.

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emersive
They copy all of their design from Apple...

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sabalaba
Not really. While some of the software UI looks similar. The hardware is
pretty unique. Have you ever held a Xiaomi before? I own both a Mi 2s and Mi
3; the hardware and software experience is really quite different from Apple.
(And most of the rest of the Android ecosystem for that matter.) The "copycat"
claims are overblown.

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SeoxyS
I think people think of the Mi4 when they talk about an Apple rip-off.

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therobot24
I've been hearing more and more about this company all of a sudden. Started
last month when i was looking for a new fitness band and saw that theirs is
super cheap - only $13. Even if it only lasts a month it'll be worth the money
given that my $150 fitbit only lasted 6 months before falling apart.

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ndomin
I'm looking at their headphones right now and shipping seems to be a huge
problem. $20 for the headphones but ~$15 to ship to the US. Are any of their
products sold in the US with cheaper shipping?

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chmars
Just try to think of a 35 USD price tag with "free" shipping! ;)

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mappu
The first comment or the first paragraph of any article about Xiaomi is always
how much they copied from Apple. I don't see it, it looks like any other
laptop, there are laptops from HP/Dell/Acer that look more like an MBP than
this does. Same goes for Xiaomi phones.

I'm sure they got a lot of inspiration from Apple and several places, so does
every company, but this "blatant copiers!" reaction is a headline in every
single Xiaomi article from every news site i've ever read. I'm not sure how
much of this reaction is legitimate and how much of it is just corporate
sentamentalism from Americans and/or apple-owners.

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hawkice
I'd say it's not anti-corporate so much as stereotyping Chinese manufacturers
as rip-off artists.

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mastazi
Looks like someone is selling it, but it might be a fake:
[http://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Laptop-Intel-
Core-i7-8G-DDR3-...](http://www.banggood.com/Xiaomi-Laptop-Intel-
Core-i7-8G-DDR3-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-760M-15_6-Inch-p-941729.html) EDIT: in q&a
section the seller says it is not available yet - it is a preorder. It might
be legit after all.

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mastazi
The price in the link seems to be higher than the one predicted in the
article, but it is claimed that the version on sale has an Nvidia GTX760M...

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phaemon
Oh, I would get that in a heartbeat. Looks like the ultimate Linux laptop!

~~~
dguaraglia
I have yet to find a good Linux laptop. Mind you, my problem is not the
hardware, it's battery life under Linux. Even out-of-the-box Windows has
better battery life than my best configured Linux.

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phaemon
Have you tried installing TLP? Also, you can check your settings with
"powertop", but you need to do some manual config to get any changes to stick.

~~~
dguaraglia
Oh, TLP looks interesting. To be fair, I haven't used Linux on a laptop
(outside of a VM) for the last 3 years so the landscape might have changed
quite a bit.

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23david
In my experience, Ubuntu 14.04 has pretty decent battery life on laptops as
long as they use fairly standard chipsets and don't use fancy graphics
switching between embedded and dedicated gpus. You shouldn't need to use TLP
or do much hackery.

But to avoid heartache, I definitely recommend using a laptop where the vendor
supports Linux drivers etc. I've had good experiences with the driver support
with recent system76 laptops.

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Hexcles
There have been rumours like this for many times. Hope this time it is not a
new rumour.

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cyberjunkie
Presenting the Xiaomi MacBook Air!

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userbinator
I like the name MiBook Air better.

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gebegb
shameless copycat

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curiously
I would buy it if it could be made certain that the data is not going back to
China.

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tracker1
Kind of sad that was actually one of my initial concerns in even seeing
this... Of course I get similar concerns wrt the U.S. gov't and Cisco products
everywhere...

