Archive for the ‘netbook’ Category

Direct From Japan, the guys I bought the Kohjinsha SC3 from, just pinged me with an unboxing video of the Kohjinsha SX3, the 8.9" touch UMPC based built around the Intel Atom platform. Again, Kohjinsha have squeezed in features that you won’t find on many other mini notebooks, let alone netbooks because this one has a DVD writer built in. Yup, its the same size as an Eee but has a DVD writer built in!

We also have some CrystalMark scores which show almost exactly the same results as the SC3 but remember that this one has the 3-cell battery rather than the 2-cell you find on the SC3. I don’t have any battery life figures yet but i’m expecting 3.5hrs with Wifi off and 3 hours with Wifi on. Official figures state 4.5hrs.

Other features include the 1280×768 hi-res LED-backlit screen, dual cams and ExpressCard slot. All in 1.2KG.

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There are a lot of people that prefer the casing of the 900 over the 901 but yet most people seem to want the Atom processor. ASUS have responded with the 900A. Its the 900 casing with an Atom-based device inside. This will please the people that know where they stand with the Eee PC models but lord help the Saturday salespeople!

JKK has some thoughts on it over at Eee central. JKKMobile.com and I’ve already added it to the database so we’ll track news on this one as it goes through. It deserves a little database love anyway as it’s a sub-1KG device!

In the Gigabyte M912X unboxing last week, the second thing I mentioned was the washed-out screen. The following morning, in my tests,  it was clear that the screen was taking too much power. Ding! Of course, it was a CCFL-backlit screen.

I sent an email to Gigabyte who have confirmed that the (production) 1280×768 screen is CCFL backlit. They also told me that the 1024×600 screened version is LED-backlit. The 1024×600 screen will be installed in the M912M version.

For those not familiar with the terms, CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp) is the old, power-hungry and often low-brightness backlighting method. LED (Light Emitting Diode) is the newer, much more power efficient and higher-brightness (mostly) method. In this case, it means that if you take a lower resolution screen, you get more battery life (it could be a significant amount, taking the standard 4-cell battery up to 3.5hrs browsing time) and, potentially a much brighter screen. All the LED 1024×600 screens I’ve seen so far have had great colour balance too.

I’ll happily drop that 1280×768 screen to 1024×600 to get the extra brightness and longer battery life offered by a LED-backlit model but there’s a catch if you’re thinking the same way. The 1024×600 screen is only in the M912M model. For that you have to sacrifice the Bluetooth (not a big deal) take Windows XP (which is likely to be faster and run better in 1GB) take an 80Gb hard drive instead of 160GB and wait 2 weeks longer until the end of September for delivery. Personally, I think it’s worth it and I don’t think anything else is going to come along that has the same features for the same price.

In summary then, there are now two models. The high-end version and the low-end version. The high-end version is available with XP and Vista. (M912X, M912V) The low-end version only with XP (M912M) There will be no Linux version.

Read the highlights and lowlights and watch the live Q&A session here. See the unboxing here.

Side-by-side specification comparison here.

Amazing! Thanks to the 600+ people that came through the live session last night. It was a pleasure to see so many people involved and an honour to have JKK, Sascha and Joanna on the line from various parts of the world. Thanks! We’ll be doing it again soon although I can’t promise to do another 6-hour marathon!

The recorded sessions are available (if you have a few hours free!!) and the first, overview session (62mins), is embedded below. [Article continues below the video]

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The HP Mininote has faded into the background recently due to the hype over Acer, ASUS, MSI and Dell netbooks but remains a favourite in terms of design. A quick poll on the live session the other night revealed that the majority of chat room members think its the best looking of all the netbooks. I tend to agree. As a netbook, its very attractive. The original target market though was schools and that’s why it was built to spec, with its tough chassis and splashproof keyboard, rather than a price.

According to HP’s Jerry Chong, (commercial notebooks business development manager) HP will offer a cheaper version. There’s no word about the possible changes in it but what Yahoo are saying about removing the ruggedness, sounds about right. Maybe it will be a lot lighter too which will be a nice side-effect.

The question remains though about weather HP will re-visit the CPU. If Intel drops a near-ready Diamondville board on their doorstep at a good price and VIA aren’t ready with Nano, it would make sense to go with Atom. Why? Because reports are coming in from all over the place that Atom is doing a great job with Vista. I’m even experiencing it myself here with the M912X. More about that later though.

Coming up in the next 24-hours, Ben’s review of the HP Mininote. In the meantime, you can brush up on HP Mininote specs in the HP Mininote product page.

Mobilx, the well-connected resellers in Hungary, got hold of a demo M912 netbook from Gigabyte yesterday and this morning at about 10am, it was at my home office. Thanks for sending it over guys. Much appreciated.

So here’s the unboxing video and overview. As usual, i’ll be putting my testing notes in the forum (see this thread) and I guess i’ll have some first impressions to post up tomorrow. Tonight though, its testing time - LIVE! Yes, I’ll be bearing all on camera again so that you can check that I’m not cheating with my CrystalMark tests! Join me on the live channel at UMPCPortal.com/live from about 6pm GMT [Update: Live session is over. Recordings are available here.] and feel free to ask questions. JKK will probably drop in with his touchscreen 901 and I’ll also have the SC3 and MSI Wind along with a stack of UMPCs if you have related questions.

For the HQ WMV version, see my Blip.tv page. For more information on the M912, see both the M912S and M912X details side-by-side on the comaprison page. The model i’m testing here is the M912X.

Mobilx have kindly run off a set of images of the Gigabyte M912 for us and, even more kindly, have sent us a demo device to review. We’re expecting that in our hands tomorrow or on Friday.

Just as a recap, the M912 is a netbook with a few special features. 1280×800 convertible 8.9" touchscreen. ExpressCard slot and disk options up to 160GB. It also ships with Vista OS options. The large-capacity 3-cell, 32wh battery means there’s a possibility of 4-hour working or 8 hours on an extended battery but we’ll wait to see what happens in our tests before promising you anything though! Gigabyte have managed to keep the whole package in the netbook pricing range which makes it an interesting option.

Oh, one more thing. A delay. It looks like the first M912 device are not going to be available until early September. We’re hearing whispers of Atom shortages which doesn’t surprise me at all.

Take a peek at the images. Apologies for the reduced color on the large versions.

Full gallery here. For more info on the M912, see the product page.

I was just reading Kevin’s article about how big the netbook market has gotten in just a year. It’s really amazing to me how the category evolved and expanded. I have maybe once seen a UMPC in use in the wild. That was someone using a UX in a coffee shop. But that’s it. Now however, netbooks seem to be all over the place. In school I regularly see people typing away on Eees. Just last week when going through Airport security a woman behind me pulled an Eee 900 out of her handbag. What surprised me the most though, is my visit to the mall here in Italy. I went into a small electronics store and looked at the laptops on display. There were two Acer 15′ notebooks which looked pretty old and as if they were sitting in the store for a long time. In a big display cabinet however where 3 Olidata JumPCs proudly displaying their 299 Euro price. The JumPC is an Italian Eee-like device that runs on the 900mhz celeron and is marketed at children. I think it might actually be the Classmate design. Definitely not what I expected to find in such a small store! I might have bought if only it wasn’t slightly bulky and err… orange

Elonex highlighted 4 new devices at Computex. No-one reported seeing them and there were no ‘live’ images to be seen anywhere.

One of the four has now been outed though. Its the OneT, which was advertised as the OneTwoLite at Computex.

Specs are thin on the ground but The Register seem to think it will have a 400Mhz processor. Mmm. Its small, its cheap. I’m sure it find find a place somewhere. Could be useful as a remote desktop? If I ever get a full set of specs, I’ll add it to the database.

Check out The Register if you’re in the market for a low-end mini.

Golem.de have done an excellent detailed review of the Aspire One 110. Good pictures too. It’s in German so I’ve picked out a few key points here and summarised them below.

• Battery is 26.6wh and lasting 3.25 hours in Wifi-on, medium backlight tests. (Minimum 1hr and 46 minutes under a 3DMark test.)
• Fan noise is more than Medion Akoya Mini / MSI Wind but still less than most standard notebooks.
• Glossy screen is a problem outside.
• Smaller than MSI Wind. Larger than Eee PC 900.
• The first intuitive clicks on the mouse buttons will miss!
• Bright backlight
• 134 dpi on the screen is ok. [Up to 180 is usually OK for most people - Chippy]
• CPU steps down to 800Mhz under certain condition. [Same as other N270 devices - Chippy]
• 4.8Gb of the 8GB Phison SSD is free on the Linux version.
• SD card reader is SDHC capable
• Wifi module does not support Draft-n
• 19 second boot time
• Firefox version 2, not 3 installed. [Should be available by upgrade from the repositories I guess. Chippy]
• Included Media Mater software plays MPEG-2 (DVB-T, DVD) up to 8mbps. [Good enough - Chippy]
• Return from standby - 10 seconds.
• SSD Write speed. 7.7MBps [Very poor - Chippy]
• SSD Read speed - 26MBps [Acceptable, not impressive though - Chippy]
• Processor speed test results is 10% faster than a Celeron 900. [Exactly as expected - Chippy]

Highlight is that there doesn’t appear to be any show stoppers and that the battery life is over 3 hours. Lowlights are the glossy screen and a slow 7.7mbps write-rate on the SSD.

Source Golem.de. Thanks for the tip Hanno

JKK knows the Eee PC’s like the back of his hand so if you’re interested in the 901 at all, head on over to his site. He’s got one with him on holiday (!) and plans to start testing and reporting. His first words are:

Battery life is goood.. looks like easy 5 hours on my use.
Eee 901 has the best battery life compared to other netbooks

The question is, is it much better than the Eee PC 900 16G that’s going for $399 on Amazon.com?

Details on the 901 here.

As Joanna mentions in her article at Laptop Magazine, it takes a lot to stand out in the netbook market right now. Yesterday I went through my own thoughts on the top netbook devices and had to leave out the Dell E, Gigabyte M912X and ECS G10L. In the last 24-hours we’ve had the final specs and EU pricing for the M912X and see that its differentiating itself with the addition of a hi-res touchscreen, ExpressCard slot and large HDD. Today, we have the information that the ECS G10L will try and differentiate itself by having two screen sizes and 3G options. On first glance, it looks like a copy of the Dell and Acer strategy. Even MSI will have a second screen-size soon but there’s something else that’s significant here.

ECS are a contract manufacturer and can offer mobile data carriers their own branded editions. With Linpus Lite as the OS (their second OS win along with the Acer Aspire) carriers can put their brand on the OS and even get some control of the application build. The big differentiator with the G10L is probably not in the specifications but in the final-product package. Expect it to be subsidised heavily to get people into their second 2-year carrier contract and expect it to be marketed heavily too.

Laptop magazine have interviewed ECS and provide some new information about pricing, availability and territorial builds. Its an interesting read.

Laptop Magazine. Interview with ECS vice president of sales, Henry Kwan.

More details and links for the ECS G10L.

Remember the days when we thought 499 Euros was a great price for a mobile PC with 1.2 Ghz, 1024MB RAM, BT, Wifi and a 30GB drive? Three months later and the Packard Bell Easynote XS20 is now going for 349 Euro which is even better value but the amazing thing is that its probably not low enough for consumers. The Acer Aspire One with a better screen, 80GB drive, far better design and the new Atom processor with better video and graphics capability, is the same price!

As a consumer, I’m enjoying these low prices but I can see that the little guys are going to get squeezed out. Innovation, as we’ve seen it with UMPCs over the last two years, will become more and more difficult as people demand lower and lower prices. It’s almost sad.

Price source: Geizhals.

While speaking with our friends at Mobilx this morning I managed to get hold of detailed information on the full M912 range of devices that are launching in Europe. Just a few minutes ago, they also finalised their pricing. It’s good! But first the details.

There are 4 versions, two of which will be available in July. One will be a barebones version which will be left to the reseller to configure with their own memory, storage and OS options. The other will be the high-end M912X.

• Model name - M912X (M912X-579B)
• CPU type - Intel Atom (Diamondville)
• CPU speed - 1600 Mhz
• Graphics - Intel GMA 950
• OS - Windows Vista Home
• Display Size - 8.9″ 1280 X 768 Touchscreen (touch weight unknown)
• RAM - 1024 MB (limit/upgrade possibility unknown)
• Hard Disk -160 GB (2.5″)
• Battery capacity - 32 (Whr)
• Weight - 1200 gm
• Size (w/h/d mm) - 235/180/42 mm
• Physical Interfaces
  • USB2.0 (x3)
  • MIC-in
  • Line-out
  • VGA
  • Ethernet 10/100
  • SD card slot
  • ExpressCard/34
• Wireless Interfaces
  • 802.11b/g
  • BT2.0
• WebCam 1.3mp

I’ve highlighted the stand-out specifications. More info and prices after the pic…

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In straight words, here’s my thoughts on the netbooks available at the moment. I’m not in the market for one but here’s what I’d consider if I was. Remember, these are personal opinions! Bluetooth, Windows XP, best-in-class size, weight and battery life would be at the top of my list. I also want something that looks nice, not just functional.

• Eee PC 701. Screen res too small. Doesn’t look good enough. Feels outdated now!
• Eee PC 900. Wouldn’t choose any of the versions with split flash. 16G version is a possibility. No Bluetooth would cause me problems. Slow SSD is a no-no.
• Eee PC 901. Battery life figures impress me. I like the look. Not an option for me if it has the split, slow SSD like the 900. Will wait for JKK opinion on upgrade (3G) possibilities. Price could be steep.
• Eee PC 1000. too big. Too heavy.
• MSI Wind. Too big. Too heavy. Sub 1KG and tight case around an 8.9″ 1024×600 screen is where it’s at.
• Acer Aspire One. Stylish. Good size, weight. 6-cell good. Where’s the Bluetoooth?
• HP Mininote. Stylish but too big and heavy. VIA C7 has an ‘old technology’ label in my head that I can’t get rid of.
• ECS G10L. Unknown quantity due to lack of info.
• Dell E. Reduced keyboard but stylish. Good brand. With Bluetooth could be at the top of my list. No confirmed details means its an unknown quantity
• Gigabyte M912. Interesting option due to ExpressCard/34 and touch. Pricing unknown. [*update below]

Top Choices today:

• ASUS Eee PC 901. Black. 12G XP. 6-cell. $599
• Acer Aspire. A150, 80GB XP. 6-cell + Mini BT dongle. Around $550 (est.)

Dell E, ECS G10L and Gigabyte M912 could be in the list but aren’t available to order right now. This could all change in a few hours as I’m waiting for the first Euro reseller pricing on the M912!

Update: M912 Pricing is now in and it takes the device into my top netbooks list.