Woot seems to have a thing for Asus’ Eee PC. It seems like at least once a month they offer one up for sale. Today marks an interesting new point for Woot in terms of Eee PCs. Today is the first time that they are selling an Atom powered Eee.
Coming in the form of the Eee 900A; the refurbished unit with a 4GB SSD, 1GB of RAM, and a 1024×600 8.9″ screen, can be yours today for only $160. This one is running Linux but you can put another OS on it easily. Just jump on over to sellout.woot.com to pick one up, and remember if you are interested, don’t delay, I have the feeling that this one could sell out quickly!
Sorry for the lack of links, this is a mobile post from the iPhone.
It’s the polar opposite of what you usually see on the portal. A mobile PC built around a huge keyboard with a tiny screen tacked on to the side. Obviously this is not quite your mobile productivity box (unless you want a kneck injury) but it’s an interesting option for the home. The video below was shot a few weeks ago at CeBIT in Hannover. After reviewing it, i’m quite sure that the RF ports you see will be for wireless HDMI antennas.
The big question now is what to call this category of devices. Sofasurfer?
Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.
Rumor: Verizon and HP Readying Subsidized Netbooks – Cheap netbooks due to subsidizes from cell phone carriers are fairly common outside the US, but it seems like HP might be teaming up with Verizon to offer a discount on a netbook if the consumer wants to start a Verizon contract. If this comes to fruition, we’ll probably see a USB WWAN card offered with the netbook, but I think most of us are hoping for a more elegant internal solution.
Just a few weeks ago, Woot featured the Asus Eee 701 netbook on their Yahoo branded site, shopping.woot.com. Today they are back with more netbooks. The Asus Eee 900 is available from shopping.woot.com today for just $179, available in black or white.
Head over to shopping.woot.com soon if you want to buy one, this deal will only be available through the end of the day or until they sell out!
I thought their description of the product was funny, here is an excerpt:
Seeeeee how weee treeembleee with eeexciteeemeeent? It’s beeecauseee weee’reee eeextreeemeeely eeexhilarateeed to preeeseeent theee Asus EeePC 900 Neeetbook. This sleeeeeek mobileee deeeviceee combineees conveeenieeent, portableee computing with an eeexpansiveee 8.9” LCD screeeeeen (feeeaturing a moreee-than-adeeequateee 1024×600 reeesolution), a reeeliableee Inteeel Mobileee CPU, and a deeeceeeent 4GB of fileee-storageee spaceee. Theee EeePC 900 opeeerateees on theee eeesteeeeeemeeed opeeen-sourceee Linux keeerneeel, with an eeespeeecially useeer-frieeendly inteeerfaceee and an eeexteeensiveee colleeection of softwareee for homeee and officeee useee.
Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.
9 Cell Acer Aspire One battery good for nearly 9 hours – If you are looking for an ugly, but effective super-battery, one has become available for the Acer Aspire One. These are third party batteries, but could give you one hour of run-time per cell (that’s 9 hours, for the math challenged).
Eee PC 701 with a multitouch display – Video – A short video from eee-pc.de that shows an Asus Eee 701 with a capacitive multi-touch capable screen. Windows 7 is on the 701 in the video providing the software for the multi-touch demo.
MSI Netbook Lasts 1.3 Days with Single Charge (On Saturn) – Kevin C. Tofel of JkOnTheRun jokes about the endurance of the MSI Wind U115 [Portal page], but it really does last quite long. Apparently eee-pc.de has tested the U115 and was able to run it for 13.25 hours on a single charge, which is extremely impressive.
RoBe:Do netbook-powered autonomous robots – Click through for a cool video of an Eee PC powered robot making and delivering popcorn to its human owner, all initiated through twitter!
Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review — Laptop Mag reviews the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page]. “Dell’s first 10-inch netbook has a compact chassis, good keyboard, and a crisp 10-inch display, but we wish it offered better battery life for the price”.
My favorite deal-per-day site, Woot.com is selling one of the original netbooks. Well, actually it is its sister site, sellout.woot.com, but the same concept applies.
Today only you’ll be able to buy a refurbished Eee 2G surf which features a 7″ 800×480 screen, 2GB of SSD space, 512MB of RAM, and an 800MHz Celeron processor. You can also choose the color you want, from black, blue, green, pink, or white. Buy soon if you are interested, once it sells out it is gone for good.
Welcome back to another edition of the WRN roundup, here is some interesting items from this week:
Sony VAIO P – HSDPA mod — Tnkgrl of tnkgrl Mobile, has managed to unlock the VAIO P’s EVDO only 3G to allow for HSDPA as well; all it took was a $1 part and a bit of hacking.
Dell officially launches Inspiron Mini 10 in France — The Inspiron Mini 10 has been officially launched in France. Still looking forward to trying one of these out for the unique buttonless trackpad and the high resolution monitor.
SSD Test: RunCore Mini PCI-e SATA SSD for Asus Eee PCs — Jkk does a video test of RunCore SSDs for Eee PCs and sees some pretty impressive speeds. Remember though, these aren’t blindingly fast and super-expensive, but rather have a good price:speed ratio.
HP Mini 1000 accessories — Brad from Liliputing points us to an HP Mini 1000 [Portal page] site with accessories available for the Mini 1000. A few things are available to order today but the VGA adapter and Mobile Mini Drive still aren’t available yet. Check out our Mini 1000 MIE coverage here.
Sony Vaio P battery life: Standard vs. Extended — Jenn of Pocketables.net continues here thorough coverage of the VAIO P with tests of the 2- and 4-cell batteries. Click through for a full chart featuring the length that the batteries lasted while running different tasks. While the 2-cell battery probably won’t satisfy your daily computing needs, the 4-cell managed to last just over 6 hours browsing the web (with one hour of that taken up by playing a flash video).
My biggest complaint about many of the netbooks on the market over the last year is that some of them can’t seem to get the keyboard right. Even when the size of the keyboard is reasonable, there can be some problems with key placement, the biggest offender being the incredibly annoying small shift key on the Eee line of Asus netbooks. For someone who really types on a keyboard, and doesn’t hunt and peck, the tiny shift key, which is often on the wrong side of the arrow keys, is a major annoyance. Missing the shift key is one thing, but accidentally hitting the up arrow key causes a whole slew of issues that really get in the way of serious typing.
A few sites got news that Asus would be switching up its keyboard arrangement, and now we can see concrete evidence of this from some of the models being shown at CES 09′. Several new Eee models are featuring the updated keyboard which moves the shift key to the left of the up arrow and increases its size. Some of the new models include the new Eee T101H 10″ ‘tablet netbook’.
An 8.9″ 2.1lb PC it’s not exactly the type of thing I’d like to have on my car dashboard but it seems that ASUS might be thinking that way. With GPS, touchscreen and an FM transmitter it looks like they’re going for the navigation option.
I have a similar combination of convertible with GPS on my SC3 and I can honestly say that I’ve never ever thought about using it as a PND. There are far better solutions out there. Maybe ASUS will focus on the tablet element of this one though. At 1KG, it will work well for some.
Christmas is approaching which means I’ll be heading to the UK for my Turkey dinner soon. It also means that I’ll be checking out mobile broadband and 3G netbook availability just in case I feel the need while I’m there. Here’s a few news items I found as I was checking out offers today.
Virgin Mobile is introducing a pre and post-pay option to their mobile phone tariff which gives you a full day of web access (We assume that it’s a port-80 proxy service here) for just 30p. OK, it’s only 25MB and you can’t officially tether your phone to a PC but for using something like Opera Mini on the occasional day away from home, it’s more than enough. If you’re looking to use the service on a more permanent basis though, the per-week and per-month option from 3UK are probably going to work out better as they have less restrictive limits. More info here. Via Informatics Online
The ASUS 901 is now available with built-in 3G from Orange UK on a 24-month contract. This must be the same as the 901 GO that’s available in other countries. The device is free but the monthly charge is 25 pounds. I highly recommended this item a few months ago and I stick by it. If you want one of the more mobile netbook options, this is the one to go for. It comes with XP and 16GB SSD. More info at Orange. Note: The same device is available, contract free, in Germany for 449 Euros.
Clove Technology has the Blue Samsung NC10 marked up at 343 pounds and due on Dec 12th. I can’t find any info about a 3G-enabled one though. This is the product I’m hoping will launch soon but it looks like I may have to wait until after Christmas.
The Advent 4213 (ECS G10L) is available for 322 pounds. It has the 3G module built in but comes with a relatively small battery. Its not the device i’m looking for.
Got any UK mobile internet product tips? If so, let everyone know in the comments below.
Jkk, master of all Eee PCs, has put up a video review of the Eee 900A, one of the newest Atom powered Eees. Swing by his site to watch the whole video and listen to Jkk’s thoughts on the netbook.
As I happened to be in my local mall I decided to look at what’s new in the electronics store. I was surprised to find the store had a whole dedicated netbook section and among them were the new Eee 904 models. These are basically the 1000h with the smaller 8.9 inch screen. The price here is 1200zl, which happens to be 100zl less than the windows version of the 901. I would still rather have the 901 though as the 904 has a not so good looking bezel around the screen and is definitely not as mobile. I don’t like the fact that subsequent Eee models seem to be getting bigger and bigger… Which one is your favorite at the moment? For me it’s the black 901. I have in fact started learning how to solder in anticipation of getting one in the future
Fed up with the slow speed of the SSD in your Eee PC? Want more storage than what your device currently has? Look no further. Jkk has received a bunch of different Mini PCIe SSD from an online retailer and put them to the test. There are two different types – the faster and more expenisve SLC, and the slower and cheaper MLC. Unfortunately Asus uses the MLC one on some of its devices which results in them being quite slow. If you feel confident enough to swap the disk out in your Eee, head on over to jkkmobile for more information.
This new model is approaching the thin line between netbooks and notebooks. I guess thats why Asus chose not to release it under the EEE brand. Or perhaps they realized people are getting confused having so many EEE models around. Whatever the reason was, this new model sure has some unique features: there is a new glossy black and silver case which looks great, a 10 inch 1024×768 1024×600 screen, Altec Lansing speakers, a fingerprint reader, 1.3 megapixel webcam, and an HDMI out. Thats a pretty impressive list of features for a device that is supposedly only going to cost 400 euro. No mention of processor speed or type, but it will probably be an Atom. Blogeee speculates that it might even be dual-core. At least thats what I understand from my limited French
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
The guys over at TweakTown went out and searched for the newest 10 inch Eee until they found it. They have a video review up which I’m embedding here and some pictures you can check out over at their site.
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Fed up with the slow speed of the SSD in your Eee PC? Want more storage than what your device currently has? Look no further. Jkk has received a bunch of different Mini PCIe SSD from an online retailer and put them to the test. There are two different types – the faster and more expenisve SLC, and the slower and cheaper MLC. Unfortunately Asus uses the MLC one on some of its devices which results in them being quite slow. If you feel confident enough to swap the disk out in your Eee, head on over to 
This new model is approaching the thin line between netbooks and notebooks. I guess thats why Asus chose not to release it under the EEE brand. Or perhaps they realized people are getting confused having so many EEE models around. Whatever the reason was, this new model sure has some unique features: there is a new glossy black and silver case which looks great, a 10 inch 
