Fresh from Sascha (eeepcpnews.de) at Computex. Here’s one of the first ever hands-on videos of the Acer Aspire One.

Specifications

The Acer Aspire has been officially launched. I think we need to go straight to a photo first…

Click to Enlarge.

And then there’s the second good bit of news – the price. $379.

The specifications look reasonable and include

• Intel Atom @ 1.6Ghz
• 8.9" LED-backlit 1024×600 screen,
• 512MB of RAM
• Linupus Lite OS
• 8GB of SSD.
• SD card reader (5-types)
• Four colours: four colors – sapphire blue, seashell white, golden brown and coral pink
• 248mmx170mmx29mm
• 3hrs (3-cell) and 6hrs (6-cell) battery options.
• Options: 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD. Windows XP

3G and WiMax options to be available later in the year.

Live images and comment from Sascha follow…[Click here]

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Lately it has seemed like a new netbook is announced weekly. With so many players hoping to turn a profit in this now hot computing sector, it’s no wonder that the demand for Intel’s Atom CPU is high. Sean Maloney, Intel’s executive vice-president commented in an interview with the Financial Times saying that Intel had received more orders for Atom than the company had expected.

We’re ramping it strongly and are still catching up with the demand. I’m not expecting the shortage to last long.

The chief exec of Asus had forecasted back in April that there would be a shortage of Atom chips until the third quarter. Interesting to know now that the Atom based Eee 901 is going to be on the market soon. The shortage could make the Eee 901 harder to buy for some time.

I’m rather surprised that they are having supply issues, Intel seemed rather affluent in their Atom advertising, maybe they weren’t expecting so many OEMs to jump on the netbook bandwagon so soon.

[FT.com]

Jkk of Jkkmobile has unearthed battery figures for the new Atom based Eee 901. Conflicting with the rumored 7 hours of battery life, the official figures are 4.2-6 hours for the 6 cell 6600 mAh (48wh) battery. Jkk also reports that the 901’s batteries will not be compatible with previous Eee models. Weight of the unit will also increase over the older Eee 900; head over to Jkkmobile for additional pictures and weight info .

A new Intel Atom based “CW0A1″ netbook is said to be making an appearance at Computex this year. Its external design appears to be roughly based around the Easynote reference design that was seen quite a while ago. The 8.9” screen, 1024×600 res, and optional WiMax module position this netbook to be a competitor to the new Atom based Eee 901 that has already been spotted at Computex. Don’t expect to see the CW0A1 selling under FIC’s branding, as the company manufactures parts and full computers often for sale to other OEMs.

Source: Computex Website

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

The pricing game in the cheap notebook category getting rather silly. I’m seeing a lot of ‘tricks’ being used that will make it very difficult for consumers to sort the wheat from the chaff. The low-end Alpha 400 from Bestlink, a RISC-based Eee-a-like is another example. I’m not going to spend any time reporting details of the device (see LinuxDevices for that) or discuss whether it’s a good choice or not but I will report exactly what came into my mind when I read the news about it. Devices like these are nothing much more than smartphones running Linux and placed in notebook casings. I sound very negative when saying that but it shouldn’t be taken that way because while current solutions don’t provide enough oomph to give most users a serious alternative to a full notebook PC, they do show that we are moving to a point where the smartphone could be the only processing device you need. The idea of a smartphone running inside a notebook form factor really is a trick that needs to be observed. [Analysis after the break.]

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