I have been watching the S.Book on a few European price tracking sites over the last week and this morning the main distributors for many of the online retailers obviously entered it into their database as 11 new retailers appeared. A quick cross-check of the German Belinea web revealed the official info.
Click for our S.Book product information sheet.
The details are the same as were previously leaked and reported with an 80GB drive, 1GB RAM and touchscreen, the VoIP module (I assume this basically a Bluetooth handset with headset and control profiles) and the 1.2Ghz VIA C7-M processor.
The price is a little more than expected though. In the UK, a place normally associated with higher prices, its retailing for a very good value 420 UK pounds (approx 800 dollars, 560 Euros) but the online retailers in Germany have it up for between 720 and 800 Euros. That’s a huge difference. If were considering this I’d wait until the prices settles down and find it’s niche, While 720 is good value in general for a ultra mobile notebook, when you compare it to the Eee PC you’re paying up to 500 Euro for 80Gb drive, 512MB RAM, touchscreen and Windows XP.
I wonder if anyone is going to do anything about the pricing of the AMD-Geode based Kohjinsha/Data Evolution/Vye S18 now. The pricing on these seems way to high considering the new competition in the market.
Update: Confirmation of the release has now been given by VIA. Good timing!
For information on the performance of this, see the UMPCPortal review on the Packard Bell Easynote XS that uses the same internals.
