Swedish company Medison are offering Linux laptops for just $150. Many have been hugely sceptical about the companies abilities to deliver a laptop at such a low cost. It now turns out that the hardware, named Medison Celebrity is simply a device designed to attract traffic to the company’s website where they intend making most of their money selling advertising space to peripherals manufacturers.

Medison’s owner Valdi Ivancic insists that the first laptops will be delivered in the middle of August and the whole exercise is not a ruse to scam money from an unwary public.

Whatever the truth, it’s the first time we’ve heard of a high ticket consumer item being subsidised by advertising revenue. Medison are aggregating an audience around it’s cheap laptop offering. Media is all about aggregating audiences.