Afghanistan’s only PC manufacturer | Hacker News Reader

Afghanistan’s only PC manufacturer

arstechnica.com

55 pointsshawndumas11 comments

This isn't some achievement, this is a company trying to avoid the crazy ~40% protectionist import tariffs.

The subtext here is that Afghanistan is hobbled by tariffs that make necessary economic goods so insanely expensive it's possible to compete with Dell and Samsung and Lenovo in your garage.

I wonder if this is useful, for a country with as little economic prosperity as Afghanistan. (A) A country like that cannot easily tax income or even consumption to raise taxes the way modern economies can. (B) Ricardo's model of relative advantage might break down at the edges when a country is competitive n so few fronts. (C) Maybe it's helpful to have openings like this that are easy, but might lead to more sophisticated industry later on.

I'm not convinced the same rules apply to countries with a 50+X difference in productivity.

A: A country as unproperous as Afghanistan should probably try to focus more on raising wealth, not taxes. Making it harder for an already poor population to buy computers isn't it.

B: A poor country's advantage is really low cost. Punitive tariffs erase that advantage. Then again, so does high security costs.

C: That's a big might. In the meantime it makes it much harder for the much more numerous industries (with much higher value add) that depend on computers to take off.

I read http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-03-14/business/93031... . I wonder what would happen if they increased prices in response to backlogs.

Their website: http://bluesonic.af/en

and YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/bluesoniccomputers

Their all-in-one desktops have integrated batteries. Useful when the power grid is unreliable, I guess.

Plus a lot more efficient so keep your UPS on the DC side rather than doing a senseless DC->AC->DC conversion.

> BlueSonic presents the BluePanel – the All in One Desktop in one portable panel, easy to carry, light and portable with multi touch screen.

That's not the machine I think of when I see the word "desktop".

It's too big to be considered a tablet and its definitely not a laptop. It is definitely meant to go on a desk. I can't imagine trying to use a small LCD TV in my lap the same way I can use a tablet or laptop.

Unsurprisingly, it appears that the "BizBook 1"[0] is a re-badged Taiwanese Clevo W740SU[1] which was also sold as the System76 Galago Ultra Pro[2]

And why is it so hard to find pictures of old Clevo laptops on vendor sites? Not even support pages. :-/

[0] http://bluesonic.af/en/product/bizbook-1-af-40su-gallery/

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7182/90-minutes-with-the-clevo...

[2] https://system76.com/static/images/support/guides/galu1-quic...

Their stuff doesn't look half bad. I'm surprised.

EDIT: It's Canadian-based.

You don't build the laptops or phones they are selling with a few technicians in a workshop.

They're assembled to some definition of "49%" - where all the major design and component fabrication is done - and then glued together in Afghanistan.

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