Sascha from EeePCNews.de recently put up an unboxing of LG’s first attempt at a netbook, the LG X110 [Portal page]. It seemed as though the X110 got lost for a little while, probably because of its cookie-cutter netbook specs released in the face of more exciting hardware, but according to our Portal popularity graph, there has been some growing interest.

This is the first unboxing I’ve seen of the X110, and it is a pretty basic unboxing at that. Although it definitely has generic netbook specs, I think this is one of the nicer models out there purely based on its design. I like the air vents on the left side, and the way that the netbook has some curvature to it, but is flat on the left and right sides. Have a look at the unboxing below.

[Electric Vagabond]

LAPTOP has gotten their hands on a Samsung NC10 [Portal page] that is fresh off the press (the ‘press’ being Korea). Not content to wait around for a US model, LAPTOP imported an NC10 and it sounds like they really like the machine. Just listen to the opening sentence of their review:

The Samsung NC10 has joined the ranks of 10-inch netbooks—including the Eee PC 1000H, MSI Wind, and Lenovo IdeaPad S10—and it beats them all.

You better believe the NC10 must be pretty good with a statement like that. The review is filled with a lot of positive comments about the NC10, specifically its keyboard and battery life. Back when we first saw the NC10, we had high hopes for the keyboard which appeared to be nice and big. The LAPTOP review says that the keyboard is 93% full sized, and the key placement is nearly perfect. This is great to know when several netbook alternatives have the extremely annoying tiny right shift key, to the right of the up arrow. Unless you are Raon and like to use optical mice to save space on your computers; a large keyboard means that you will have to sacrifice space for some other parts of the netbook, such as the trackpad. LAPTOP tells us that the trackpad is undersized.

In addition to a great keyboard, the NC10 also boasts an impressive battery. A 6-cell battery is standard on the NC10 and will provide you with 7+ hours of use LAPTOP tested the battery with continuous Wi-Fi web surfing and 50% battery life screen brightness; the NC10 responded with an impressive 7 hours and 34 minutes of run time!

Chippy’s Update: Laptopmag ran a second test with 100% screen brightness and got just under 5hrs of wifi-on surfing time. They will re-run the tests with 50% screen brightness to double-check that the screen backlight is having such a big effect. In my opinion, 50% screen brightness could easilty add 2W to the overall drain if it’s a big, bright screen and make a huge difference. Keep a watch on the Laptopmag NC10 review page 3 for updates.

Swing by LaptopMag.com for the full review.

The blogosphere tends to be fairly polarized in terms of netbook reporting. In the western world, where most of the English-speaking bloggers, readers and advertisers are, we have a slick range of style-oriented designs that are mostly based on the Intel Atom processor. In other parts of the world, the situation is rather different. The focus is on functional, simple and extremely low cost PCs.

In developing countries, where SMS’ are used to agree contracts between remote communities, the idea of a 10" screen with a keyboard alone would be something new. It wouldn’t matter what’s inside it as long as it provides a basic computing experience and that’s why many people believe (including myself) that the big wave, the big sales numbers, will be in China, India and Africa.

VIA already does good trade in these areas with simple designs based on what we consider to an be ‘old’ C7-M processor. Microsoft already does trade with starter editions of XP, again, something we consider to be an old OS but it looks like the two companies want to get together, with a bunch of others, to really optimise their products and marketing for this segment with a new initiative called the Global Mobility Bazaar.

VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the’Global Mobility Bazaar’ (GMB), an innovative industry infrastructure program aimed at driving the rapid global adoption of affordable mobilecomputing devices.

Through the GMB program, VIA is partnering with over 15 GMB manufacturers and infrastructure partners in China on the development of a wide variety of mini-notes, netbooks, and notebooks based around VIA’s ultra low power processor platforms.

Equipped with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, these systems will deliver an optimized mobile computing and Internet experience across a variety of form factors with screen sizes ranging from 7" to 15".

[full press release. Website]

There are two things to note here. 1) XP looks like it will live on and in this program, you can bet that its being given away for next to nothing. 2) This looks like an X86-only initiative that will be used in positioning against ARM-based netbooks.

I spoke to VIA about this program yesterday. They are obviously excited about it and rightly so. They’ve seen what happened with sales of cheap mobile phones into developing countries and they want to stimulate the same thing with low-end portable computing devices. Sandisk, AMI (BIOS) and other partners are involved and we should be seeing the first netbooks becoming available at the end of December, they tell me.

Engadget seems to have gotten some nice hands on time with the Eee S101 [Portal page]. Their impressions were pretty lite, but identical to some that we have heard in the past. Of course the most prominent aspect of the S101 is its (relatively) high price tag of $699. Then there is that dubious tiny right shift key which couldn’t be more annoying to type with. However they did seem to like the multi-touch trackpad, the screen, and the thinness of the S101. Swing by Engadget to see the hands on impressions and the gallery.

It has been a busy week for the HP Mini-Note [Portal page]. Following in the trail of the Eee PC dropping to $299 in retail stores, Liliputing shows us that the HP Mini-Note 2133 can now be bought for $299 from Amazon.

The biggest news is that it looks like HP is reading a new Mini-Note model. The HP Mini-Note 1000 is reportedly going to have a 10" screen (larger than the 2133’s 8.9" screen), weigh 2.25 pounds, and be less than 1" thin. Images that have been discovered show the HP Mini-Note 1000 with a black color rather than the 2133’s silver, possibly showing us that it is made from plastic this time around rather than aluminum. The real question will come down to the system that powers the Mini-Note 1000. Will they move from the C7-M to Intel’s Atom, or possibly use VIA’s Nano? Time will certainly tell.

Additionally, it appears as though the 2133 can be found equipped with a 1024×600 resolution, as opposed to its launch resolution of 1280×768. Brad from Liliputing warns people to be wary of the model they are purchasing so they don’t end up with a resolution that they didn’t want. Here is his list of models that have a 1024×600 screen (all others should be 1280×768):

• KS103UT – $599 with a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M CPU, 2GB of RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HDD, 802.11b/g WiFi, and Windows Vista Home Basic
• KS106UT – $649 with a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M CPU, 2GB of RAM, 120GB 7200rpm HDD, 802.11a/b/g/draft-n WiFi, Bluetooth, SUSE Linuse Enterprise Desktop
• KS105UT – $679 with a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M CPU, 2G of RAM, 120GB 5400rpm HDD, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, Windows Vista Business with optional Windows XP downgrade

[jkOnTheRun] [Liliputing]

Many others have written about it. NYTimes. ARS Technica, Liliputing, GearLog are just a few. This taken direct the article at Small-Laptops.

Jobs on netbooks: “As we look at the netbook category, that’s a nascent category. As best as we can tell, there’s not a lot of them being sold. You know, one of our entrants into that category if you will is the iPhone, for browsing the Internet, and doing email and all the other things that a netbook lets you do. And being connected via the cellular network wherever you are, an iPhone is a pretty good solution for that, and it fits in your pocket.

I love that attitude. He’s effectively saying that MIDs are where it’s at isn’t he. Isn’t he? The ‘Not a lot being sold’ part is probably a nod towards their 7 million iPhone sales.

I agree with Jobs and believe the Netbooks segment is a dangerous segment to be playing in right now. I believe that the action will start to take place in other segments soon. It will only take one well-executed MID/PMP product to make heads turn and for people to realise that most of what they do on their netbooks (surfing, reading emails, IM, videos) can be done by a device that fits in the pocket. Yes I know some of you use netbooks as laptops for inputting text but to be honest, I don’t think that inputting reams of text is what most people are doing with their netbooks. When that special product comes out and when those heads turn, people like Samsung, Toshiba, ASUS could get caught out with big zero-margin netbook stocks. In fact the whole Intel Atom ecosystem could get caught out if that device turns out to be based on an ARM core and gets followed up by a raft of cool ARM-based devices from established players.

Jobs will need a product to replace the iPod in the next 18 months and a combined video and Internet device is perfect for that. There’s almost no question that Apple will do a 4-6" device and that the technology and software is there to be able to do it but the question is, when will the market and carriers be ready? End of 2009? Beginning of 2010? Apple must have tens of prototypes in the lab ready to choose from and they’re probably doing the sensible business thing by waiting.

  Brad over at Liliputing has put together a nice list of 13 netbooks (wouldn’t you figure that 5 of them are Eee PCs) that can be bought for $399 or less. Brad mentions that the initial goal price for the original Eee PC was $299, but in reality ended up at $399 when the devices first started shipping. While we might be looking at the same price as that original Eee PC that launched over a year ago, the power and quality (and number of choices) has increased substantially.

While we are on the subject, Matt Dillon from GottaBeMobile.com has noted that Eee PCs are starting to land in retail stores for that original goal price of $299. This is a very exciting time for consumers. Imagine all of those who didn’t need an $800 desktop, but bought something similar because it was their best option. You can now literally walk into your local Target and pick up a small but capable laptop for $299.

The Asus Eee S101 has gotten its own official press page. Featured on the page are some good videos, images, and probably most importantly some release dates. On the first screen of the product page, you can roll your mouse over a bar on the left that is vertically labeled as "S101 launch schedule", and you can see when the S101 has apparently launched, or will be launched in the future, and what locales that each date corresponds to. There are some videos talking about the S101 and Eee PCs in general, and also some press photos from the initial announcement. One section of the page mentions that the S101 runs almost completely silent, and uses Asus’ exclusive "Super Hybrid Engine" to push the S101 to 5 hours of battery life.

[Electric Vagabond]