Another offer from Expansys. This time it’s the Vye S41 which is one of the only netbook-style devices to offer a convertible screen and a DVD drive. We tested this and moaned about the price back when it was 1000 pounds but Expansys in the UK have it on offer now for half of that price making it much better value. It runs the Intel Stealey CPU platform (think 1.3Ghz netbook performance) with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB drive with Vista OS.  The DVD drive makes it quite unique amongst UMPCs and Netbooks.

Expanys link (affiliate)

More details in our product pages.

Well done Amazon. At last an easy to-use selection of ‘no-CD’ games that you can download, test and buy from your mobile PC.

Amazon launched their Game Downloads section on Tuesday. It’s a new section of Amazon.com that allows you to choose and trial any of the games and then purchase it if you like it. Game downloads are nothing new but this simple service with this trusted brand could be just what the casual gamers on netbooks want.

There are currently just under 600 titles available from various software houses and download and trial is a simple process of logging in, downloading a download application and then downloading and installing the app.

I tried Airport Mania on the Medion Akoya Mini netbook and the download process worked very smoothly. The game worked smoothly too as I seemed to have killed 30 minutes of my day. (The maximum trial time of a game is 30 minutes)

The selection of games is definitely ‘casual’ but this download model, combined with the Amazon brand and the millions of netbooks out there without optical drives could tempt many software houses into adapting their older titles giving them a fresh new market to step into.

If anyone tests this out, be sure to drop some comments below for other readers. What netbook and what game did you try? How did it go for you? Have you used game download services for the your netbook before? If so, which service did you try?

Via Buzz Out Loud podcast 903

Welcome to the weekly netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll do my best to highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but could still be interesting. I’m posting this first WNR today to get things started.

• History of the Netbook – It seems Ars Technica has started a series called “The State of the Netbook” part one features a good overview of how things came to be and even touches on UMPCs.

• Sony VAIO P $200 rebate – Verizon offers a $200 rebate on a new VAIO P [Portal page] purchase with the activation of a 2-year plan.

• More Aspire One 10″ info – Engadget is reporting that the new 10″ Aspire One will sell for $425 with a 3-cell battery, or $450 with a 6-cell (which should run for 7 hours), some time in February. It will use the Atom N270 CPU, or a more expensive model with rock out with the N280 and have integrated 3G purportedly for $575.

• Touchscreen Eee PC T91 hands-on video – Eee-pc.de goes hands on with the touchscreen Eee PC T91 [Portal page] announced at CES 2009. Video and site in German.

• Dell Inspiron Mini 10 pricing – The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 finally gets some pricing info. Engadget reports that it has sprung up at Tesco for £349 ($480 USD). I’m looking forward to the Mini 10 for several reasons.

That’s all for this week. See you next time!

It seems like we’ve known about the upcoming 10″ netbook from Acer for a while, but things just got a little bit more official. Netbook3G has found details about Acer’s second netbook at the FCC. Among the images are plenty of internal photos, and it seems like the FCC even has the manual hosted. Swing by Liliputing where Brad has pulled a bunch of the photos and put them in one place for your viewing pleasure.

It doesn’t seem like there are many differences between this Aspire One and the original [Portal page] [review], but of course the 10″ screen and some cosmetic changes and the inclusion of Bluetooth. I can’t say I like how the hinge accents have been changed from circles to teardrop shapes. The overall design seems a bit more noisy than the original as well. We’ll have to wait and see how this new 10″ version fares against their original which we thought was a pretty good jump into the netbook market. Acer claims that the first Aspire One is the worlds most popular netbook.

ABI surveyed 1000 people about netbooks. According to their results, only 79% see them as a secondary computer. 11% see them as a primary computer proving that there is a significant overlap an direct impact on notebook sales. No surprise really.

The results are not good news for laptop and netbook manufacturers in general, despite the 79% that are buying a netbooks as a second device. Here are some thoughts from the top of my head.

• Any survey done at the moment is dealing with early-curve consumers that are highly likely to buy a second device. In one year the figures might be worse purely based on the change of customer type (although it will be hard to do this survey in the mainstream market as many consumers may not even know they’ve bought a netbook)
• Even if people buy a netbook as a secondary device, it will change their purchasing rhythm pushing the purchase of a replacement notebook further out. In some cases the netbook may satisfy the customer 100% and the next notebook purchase may never happen.
• As netbooks move to bigger screens, they pull prices of normal laptops down in order to compete on perceived value.

My feeling is that the netbook effect is going to hit manufacturers very hard in the next 3 years. Netbooks aren’t going away though so they will need to find a way to cope with it. This means stripping out niche products, reducing quality and implementing lots of tricky marketing.

More thoughts

ABI Research Survey: 79% of Respondents View Netbooks as “Secondary inch Devices | Press Release | ABI Research.

The sun is shining out in Pocketables land. I can almost see Jenn’s smile radiating from here, 7500 miles away on the other side of the planet. She’s got the Vaio P and the unboxing and testing has already started.

Unboxing photos’s here.

It looks like the usual stack of Sony apps and try-me-ware is installed so Jenn will probably have some cleaning-up to do before the first impressions come out. She has the 1.3Ghz, 64GB SSD version. I’ve used a similar set-up on the OQO 2+ so if the SSD is fast on the Sony, I know the Vista experience should be bearable for casual use. Certainly if you keep the device in standby, it should be fine for whipping it out of the handbag and checking Google forthe local nail parlour ;-)

Setting up the Sony Vaio P.

More info on the Sony Vaio P here.

So, Mobiln is now focusing on netbooks. It’s a huge setback for MIDs to learn that Moblin for MIDs won’t be ready until 2010 but clearly there’s a business case there to focus on netbooks first. I tried the build briefly on a Medion Akoya Mini and here’s what happened…

ABI research are expecting 35 million netbooks to be shipped in 2009 and 139 Million in 2011.

Their definition of a netbook is not stated. The source is unknown too as the press release points to their Q4 2008 review of the mobile market.

My prediction is less than half that in 2009, based on the traditional definition of a netbook. 139 million seems to high for the traditional netbook market but if they’re including all the devices that are creeping up in price, features and size then why not.

35 Million Netbook Shipments Expected in 2009: An Era Begins | Press Release | ABI Research.