Gigabyte MID M528 in stock and priced at $420 (apparently)
Following the outrage over the possibly premature preorder pricing (ah, alliteration) for the Gigabyte MID M528 and in response to the Taiwanese company’s subsequent backpedaling, Steve at UMPCPortal urged MID manufacturers to "take a chance and bring sub $500 3G-enabled highly-converged online media gadgets to the people."
Even before his plea, I stumbled upon a questionably legitimate retailer called S & A Mobile Parks that not only gives Steve what he wants but also claims to have 20 Gigabyte M528s, each priced at just $420, in stock and ready for shipping.
I sent S & A Mobile Parks a list of questions a few hours ago, but I’m not holding my breath for a response.
Digging around for information about the company, who added the 4.8-inch Intel Atom slider to their catalog on May 2, I learned that while S & A has apparently been around for 10 years, its domain name was only created two weeks ago (according to whois.net, anyway).
While an established online presence certainly isn’t required for a retailer to be considered legitimate and trustworthy, when you take into consideration 1) the look of the S & A website, 2) the web pages that still contain placeholder text, 3) the low prices of their products, and 4) the fact that orders are to be placed via email (despite what appears to be a functional shopping-cart system), my skepticism about what could easily be a fly-by-night operation isn’t unwarranted.
Anyone ever dealt with or heard of S & A Mobile Parks?
[Product page]
