Nothing But Netbooks! Acer Aspire One, Dell E, Eee PC, HP Mini-Note, MSI Wind, and Other Netbook News, Reviews, Coverage

In an online interview at VIAarena, Tim Brown, International Marketing Manager for Mobile Products for VIA, discusses the current and future for UMPCs and netbooks. Some of his points:

• The HP Mini-Note is the number 1 selling netbook worldwide (at least that’s his claim)
• He sees smaller 7″ netbooks continusing to co-exist with the larger 8.9″ models and further segmentation of the netbook space based on cost and performance. As an example, the many different models of the Dell E might just be one manifestation of that idea.
• x86 based smartphones beginning in 2009 will start to become a factor.

Read the full story

Posted under Uncategorized

PC Magazine now has posted its review of the MSI Wind, and gives it four stars out of five and an Editor’s Choice award due to its feature-to-price ratio.

Read the full story

Posted under MSI Wind

In an apparent about-face to comments made last week by new CEO Dirk Meyer, AMD has announced that for now, it is not going to enter the netbook market.

“We are not saying it’s not an important segment and we’re not saying it’s not a growing segment,” said Nigel Dessau, AMD’s Senior VP/Chief Marketing Officer. “What we are saying is that we are a smaller company and we have to focus on what we do well at this point. We are watching that segment rather than playing in it, but as it matures we’ll see where it goes. At this moment, we are going to focus on what we do best.”

According to the full article in eWeek, some analysts believe AMD will stay out of the netbook market for now as it looks to recover from seven consecutive quarters of losses and refocus on the higher-volume server and PC desktop markets.

Read the full story

Posted under Uncategorized

Wow, we guess we weren’t kidding when we said “another week, another re-branding of the MSI Wind” in an earlier post. This week’s re-branded version, for the Czech market, is unique in that it will come standard with 2GB memory and a 120GB hard drive, more than the MSI Wind itself or any of its other variants. Users will also have a choice of Windows Vista Home Basic, XP Home, and Ubuntu Linux.

Read the full story

Posted under MSI Wind

Do you think that the Aspire One’s included SSD is too slow? If so, these pictures showing how to upgrade the SSD might be useful.

Read the full story

Posted under Acer Aspire One

Wal-Mart has rolled back the price on the Everex Cloudbook to $299. Previous price was $349.

Product link

Posted under Cloudbook

During their latest conference call, newly annointed CEO of AMD Dirk Meyer declared that his company would be a part of the netbook market.

(But) slightly smaller form factor notebooks and inexpensive notebooks. That is a market segment that we’re interested in…It’s actually a segment that we’re starting to offer products to our customers in support of now,” Meyer said. “We actually haven’t talked in public about that, but I expect we’ll be talking about that roadmap when we get together in November at our analyst conference.”

Read the full story

Posted under Uncategorized

Techradar’s got a long comparison of the Asus Eee PC 901, Acer Aspire One, HP Mini-Note, and MSI Wind, evaluating each model on a scale of 1 to 10 in important things such as battery life, screen, and performance.

Final verdict? It ranks the four in this order:

1. MSI Wind: “combination of large hard drive and familiar OS makes for a well-rounded experience”
2. Acer Aspire One: “only Acer seems to be focusing correctly right now, and it manages this while producing a well rounded machine”
3. Asus Eee PC 901: “it just doesn’t capture the magic of the original, or do enough to warrant the high price tag. It works well though, and the expertise of the existing user base is reassuring”
4. HP Mini-Note: “The main problems we have with this machine are the relatively high price, and the choice of processor”

Read the full story

Posted under Acer Aspire One, Eee PC 901, HP Mini-Note, MSI Wind

Laptop Magazine has posted its full review of the Acer Aspire One. Major points:

• Keyboard: large enough, responsive, good tactile feedback.
• It’s hard to add new applications unless you are well versed in Linux.
• Tilting the screen back 45 degrees created a distracting glare. The speakers were loud but tinny.
• During testing, the Aspire one got a bit hot on the underside of the unit on the left side (toward the exhaust), measuring about 107 degrees. Most other areas were warm but okay.
• Good wi-fi performance.

Rating: 3.5 stars out of five.

Read the full story

Posted under Acer Aspire One

For what it is worth, the Acer Aspire One is now available for “pre-order” on Amazon, with a “we’ll ship it when it’s available” status. Basic model in white is listed for $416.99, which seems high considering the $379 seen on other places such as Newegg or CDW. Of course, shipping is free and depending on the state you live in, you wouldn’t have to pay the sales tax on Amazon so thouse could be factors meriting consideration. There’s also an additional special offer of $10 off if you use Amazon’s Bill Me Later feature.

Ideally though, they should just correct the price as they did for the Wind. Then with all the stuff above, it’d be a pretty good deal.

As of this writing, it is ranked #44 in the Computers and PC hardware, #28 for Electronics > Notebooks.

Product link

Posted under Acer Aspire One