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

One of the stories appearing last week that deserves a little bit of attention  is the news via Engadget (unknown source) that the Dell E will come in both 8.9 and 12" configurations. The 8.9" device is marked up as as a Mobile Internet Device due to it fitting into  Dell’s 30-minute Web experience pigeonhole.

We love multiple definitions of the same term here. It really helps the customers…not!

It will be Atom Diamondville based, come with a fairly standard-set of netbook features (multiple SSD options, colors, Linux and XP options, BT on high-end model) but will have two interesting features. Firstly, Dell will aim to make a V1.5 with 3G or Wimax for some markets. Secondly, they will build it around a 35wh battery which is nearly 50% more than the one you’ll find on a Wind and could return over 4 hours. A real ASUS EeePC 901 competitor in terms of battery life. Target weight is 1KG with dimensions around the 230×170x30mm mark. About the same size as the Eee PC 901. Maybe a tad thinner.

Target launch date is August at a starting price of $299 with the V1.5 models coming along in Oct. Penciled in for Q2 2009 is V2.0 but there’s no information about that yet.

No doubt there’s a heavy element of marketing included in this product so expect to see it advertised everywhere in the run up to Christmas!

Source: Engadget.

More details and links for the Dell E here.

Acer have a big advantage in the netbook race. Pre-established sales channels and partners.

The Aspire One is already showing up in price comparison engines in Germany with the base model being advertised for 329 Euro (8GB, Linux, 512MB) which is just 50 Euro more than the Eee PC 701 4G! The high-end Linux model (80GB, 1GB) for 399 Euro which is 40 Euro less than the ‘old’ and less equipped Eee PC 900. Availability looks like 4-7 weeks although one reseller is quoting 10 days.

Because of its size (smaller than HP2133 and MSI Wind,) style, dual SD card slots, availability and low-low price, I won’t be surprised if this ends up as one of the most popular netbook choices of 2008.

Source: Geizhals.

Not Joanna Stern!

Joanna Stern, queen of netbook-land it seems, has published her full review of the MSI Wind and given it 4.5/5 on the morning that it officially launched. Good timing MSI!

The review covers pretty much every aspect of the device from design to battery life (Mmm, battery life. Why the cheap, low-cap batteries MSI? It could have been a lot better) and is the must-read if you’re considering the device, which, if the stats on UMPCPortal.com are anything to go by, is a huge number of people.

Laptop Magazine MSI Wind Review

The press release and product pages are now available.

Via Engadget.

MSI Wind details, specs and updates being added to our MSI Wind product page.

Hold your Eee PC 900 orders because the 901 is coming! It’s just been shown-off at a WiMax conference in Taipei and PCWorld picked up the details.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will standard features of the 901, and a WiMax version is planned as well. Black and white versions of the 1.14 kilogram laptop were on display, which has a battery life of four to six hours, Asustek said. Pricing was not disclosed.

4 hours on a 4-cell battery. 6-hours on a 6-cell battery perhaps? The 901 will feature the same 12G/20G flash option on the XP and Linux versions respectively but it’s not clear if the flash is split into the same 2-partition setup that makes XP difficult to manage on the 900.

Lots more details are sure to be coming up in the next 24 hours. I’ve just been in touch with Sascha of EeePCNews.de and he’s already made contact with the ASUS guys. News soon!

Via Engadget

‘Desirable’ is the word and I base that thought purely on the looks on the MSI Wind, just as a large percentage of netbook buyers are going to do. I’m almost trying to convince myself that I need one after watching this video. More momentum to MSI’s marketing efforts as the rocky waters of Computex approach.

Oh the power of a decent Internet video!

Click through to the Crave video. More info on the MSI Wind available on its product page where you can also check out the alternatives.

Two posts in a row that pick out errors in other peoples reports. I’m starting to sound like a CrankyGeek! I will be more positive. I will be more positive. I will….

Fudzilla briefly tested the 1.6Hz Diamondville version of the Atom processor and don’t appear to be too impressed.

“… the CPU doesn’t really do well in multi-media applications. It doesn’t even render that well, as Cinebench was incredibly slow, slower than we’ve seen in years.”

But then they say this:

the CPU is great for surfing, typing, instant messaging and listening to music. It even plays videos just fine

Which is exactly what it’s meant to do! The features are in the size, power-efficiency and mainly, cost, not in the performance figures.

With this new CPU running 60% faster than the previous generation it gives marketing teams a nice little advantage but when real-life performance doesn’t get anywhere near what’s expected of a 1.6Ghz CPU, managing expectation becomes a bit of a problem. I don’t think it’s Fudzilla’s fault that they’ve focused on performance first.

Related: Don’t expect miracles from Netbooks.

Source: Fudzilla review.

Doody, A nickname I feel I’ve mentioned before in the last few weeks, has been testing the MSI Wind and logged the whole series of tests in the MSI-Wind forums. The tests results include a hard-disk test, PCMark 05, 3D Mark 03 and a battery life test.

The hard disk transfer speeds look very good in comparison to devices with 1.8" drives and that means that with XP, application load-times should be fairly swift. The battery life was measured while doing all the benchmarking and represents an extreme scenario. 2 hrs and 19 minutes. In general, adding 30% to a full-load test result like this will give you the real in-use battery life which in this case is 3 hours. Not exactly the leap-forward in battery life that some people were expecting but in-line with our expectations. Considering that the netbook platform of Diamondville/954 chipset is very much the same as the Stealey/945 chipset seen on 2007 UMPCs, its no real surprise. If you were to add a 10" screen and 2.5" drive to a Q1 Ultra, you’d also be up at near 10W average drain.

I haven’t been able to analyse the PCMark results yet because i’ve asked Doody to see if he can run the CrystalMark test which will give us a good breakdown and like-for-like comparison with the results that Ctitanic keeps track of.

The MSI-Wind continues to be the #1 most-viewed device on UMPCPortal. Details and specifications in the product page here.

VIa small-laptops

Source: MSI-Wind.net

CHW, a Chilean website presents a brief but glowing hands-on report for the MSI Wind mentioning good keyboard, a cool temperature, and what can be interpreted as a responsive feel to Windows XP.  It also mentions battery life figures of 3+hours for the 3-cell battery and 7 hours for the 6-cell which, given the slightly more efficient CPU and, hopefully, a more efficient motherboard design combined with the LED-backlit screen, seem reasonable claims. [More after the pic...]

Read the full story

Thanks to Expansys last week, the UK prices and specs for the MSI Wind were revealed but the only US prices we had until now were import prices. Today, LAPTOP magazine has revealed the US-local specs and pricing and rather than charging similar prices for both the Linux and Windows versions of the Wind as in the UK, the MSI US marketing team are choosing to offer an Eee PC 900 12G (Linux) competitor at $399 with the 80GB drive, 512MB and Novell SUSE Linux. If you want XP you’ll be paying $150 more and getting an additional 512MB into the build. It doesn’t seem to be worth $150 but there could be additional specifications that  haven’t been revealed  through the LAPTOP magazine article. I’ve been using Suse Linux for about 8 years and have always been very happy with the desktop interface and the ‘YAST’ system management tools. I even ran it on my work-supplied Pentium 1Ghz notebook with 512MB RAM for 2 years and only went back to Windows when I started  getting into UMPCs. [more after the break]

Read the full story

Expansys have put their pricing up for the 10″, XP and Linux versions of the MSI Wind.

The XP Home version based on the 1.6Gz Diamondville (assumed) Atom processor, 10″ LED-Backlit, 80GB (2.5″) hard drive, 1GB of RAM, Wifi, Bluetooth and a 1.3MP WebCam is available for pre-order for 350 pounds. The Linux version is 30 pounds less. By Expansys pricing, this puts it at only 70 pounds (about 25%) more expensive than the 4GB Eee PC. The XP version of the wind is even the same price as the Linux version of the HP 2133!

Looking across Expansys Europe, the German price (for the UK, XP Version) is 459 Euro’s which makes the Packard Bell Easynote look expensive at 499.

Update: US price (UK version export through expansys-usa) is $610.

At these prices, I think the MSI Wind might take the cheap mininote crown, especially with the girls! Interested parties can make their way over to Expansys. (Affiliate link.)

Specifications and details available on the MSI Wind product page.