I took a few hours out yesterday to meet up with Johannes who runs Netbux.de (get it?) and Einfach-eee.de. He had a Fujitsu Amilo Mini that he offered to show me so we met in the coffee shop, swapped devices and chatted for an hour.

I have to say that after using the Everun Note for a few days, the Amilo Mini felt huge and actually rather boring. Its not bad in any sense as the design is slightly different (not my cup of tea though) the ExpressCard/34 slot is useful and they appear to have put good quality batteries in the device that will return a real 3hrs with WiFi on. I didn’t like the mousepad to start with but I did start to get used to it after a short while. The keyboard is the same as on EeePCs so there’s nothing to mention there. Screen brightness was as good as other netbooks. The whole device seemed almost rugged in its build quality. Of course, performance is just as good as you would find with all the other Atom-based netbooks. Very swift with Windows XP. There’s Bluetooth included which is useful but the disk was  a 4200RPM, single platter 1.8″ Toshiba MK6028GAL. Not the fastest of options but as there seems to be a disk access plate, upgrading to a fast SSD should be possible.

For 399 Euro, there’s not much you can say against it. If you like the look, trust the brand and fancy playing with exchangeable faceplates, its a very safe purchase. The only other options you might consider are the MSI Wind and EeePC 1000H which offer better keyboards, easier-to-read screens and are priced at the same level.

Amilo Mini Specifications are in the database here. More images in the gallery.

And what did Johannes think of the Everun Note and Kohjinsha SC3? Well he was surprised at the size but immediately got that fact that they are in a different class and not meant to be laptops. As is normal, I had to give a quick usage demo to highlight that the screen is the mousepad and that it can be held in one hand. I saw some raised eyebrows but i’m not sure if he really fell for the Ultra Mobile concept!

Thanks to Johannes of Netbux.de

Kevin C. Tofel over at JKotR has spent some time benchmarking the 6-cell extended battery for the MSI Wind. I have to say, I’m really impressed. Using BatteryEater, Kevin was getting 3 hours and 39 minutes running the minimum runtime test, which uses the CPU at 100% capacity until the battery dies. Running the test a 50% screen brightness, Wi-Fi on, and no Windows power management, it is easy to how a regular work load could give you nearly 5 hours of runtime. Kevin also ran BatteryEater after toggling the Wind’s ‘Turbo’ button, which cuts the CPU speed in half. Running at 800MHz, the Wind went for an impressive 4 hours and 59 minutes under full CPU strain. Kevin says that with regular usage and power management, you could hit 7 hours with the extended battery. Head over to JKotR to see the full article including a comparison to the Asus Eee 1000H.

Jkk has posted about a story from Aving.net about a forthcoming Samsung netbook. What does Samsung have to offer the bandwagon? Well for starters, the unit looks pretty slick. The bottom of the casing is curved and it appears to be quite thin. As far as I can tell from the translated page, the unit was announced at a WiBro event, so you can expect some WWAN in there (for US consumers that will most likely mean WiMAX through Sprint). The rest should be familiar to most of us by now, 8.9" or 10" screen (probably 1024×600), Atom CPU, built-in webcam, VGA output, 3x USB 2.0, ethernet port and mic in/audio out (from what I can see in the images).

It’ll be up to the quality of the keyboard (which does look nice), and battery life to determine whether a potential customer will pick up this netbook, or go with one of many other choices. According to the story, the Samsung netbook will be launched in late October. Click through to jkkmobile for pictures.

[Aving.net] (translated)

Jkk has uncovered some additional information regarding the type of SSDs used in the Mini 9, and the 3G situation.

When it comes to SSDs, it seems as though the performance will depend on the capacity. Jkk (who certainly knows something about these SSDs) notes that the 16GB Mini 9 will use STEC’s (fast) SSD module, while the 4/8GB models will use a (slower) Intel SSD. The STEC SSD apparently has a read/write of 85/25, while the Intel module sits at 38/10, which is the same SSD used in the Acer Aspire One.

As for 3G, we know that there is a SIM card slot behind the battery, and room for the WWAN unit, however it looks like some of the models are lacking the WWAN module (and the PCI-E connector) until they announce carrier locked 3G units. Jkk’s recommendation: wait before ordering! Head over to jkk’s blog for more info and some good pictures.

As most of you know by now, Dell launched the Inspiron Mini 9 netbook yesterday. Jkk has come across the service manual for the unit on Dell’s site.  The manual shows some good internal pictures and there is a lot of talking in the blogosphere right now about how easy it could be to upgrade the unit’s hardware (never a bad thing).

Vicente, a ultra mobile PC Portal reader, wants to know whether the SSD in the Mini 9 has 100% high speed flash storage, or if they will pull and Eee and have a small part of the storage be high speed, but the majority of it much slower. I asked netbook guru jkk if he had any insight, and he says it isn’t clear yet. Apparently some of the review units that made their way to some of the larger tech sites don’t all have the same SSD. No one is sure exactly which will ship with the unit so it seems as though we’ll have to wait and see.

A lot of info about Dell’s entry into the netbook market has been uncovered in the last day or two. The Inspiron 910 Mini 9 has gone official a day before Gizmodo’s predicted date. Now we have all the details about the new netbook, and reviews are already up on the nets. Lets have a look, shall we?

Info directly from Dell’s site shows us three model tiers. All models share an 8.9" 1024×600 display and a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU and the usual bevy of ports (full specs can be found in the Portal), but they differentiate in RAM, OS, webcam and SSD size. The least in terms of specs and price starts at $349 and comes equipped with 512MB of RAM, no camera, 4GB SSD, and Ubuntu, apparently with a custom Dell interface. The next model up will run you $399 and has 512MB of RAM, 0.3MP webcam, 8GB SSD, and Windows XP Home. The most costly of the three is $449 and has 1GB of RAM, 16GB SSD, 0.3MP webcam, and is also running Windows XP. Keep in mind, these are just pre-configured machines. You can mix and match the different specs (RAM/OS/webcam/SSD) and get exactly what you want. Oh and don’t forget that you can pay an extra $25 for a white model instead of a black one, if you feel so inclined. Buyer beware, none of the models come with Bluetooth, you need to add that yourself (+$20) when you customize the machine.

Strangely enough, Dell is offering ‘Instant Savings’ of $40 and $55 on the middle and top end models respectively; effectively negating any price break for taking the Ubuntu OS. Anyone care to theorize why they would want to get XP machines out the door rather than Ubuntu?

From an unknown source, but it looks good to me! A lttle high on price perhaps but that Dell brand-value will carry them through i’m sure.

Full specifications in the portal.

Update: Dell Mini 9 microsite is now live. (U.S.)

Update 2: Its all official now.

Aving has just posted a report from the Asus World 2008 conference about the Asus N10 netbook/laptop we covered earlier. The N10 looks simply wonderful and there is no mistaking that this is a high-end piece of equipment. What is probably the best thing about this device is that it has an Nvidia GeForce 9300GS graphics card. Try finding that on another netbook! Other previously unknown specifications include a 320GB harddrive, 2GB of RAM, LED backlit 10″ screen and an Intel N270 (Atom) processor. Add this to the previously known features (HDMI, Altec Lansing speakers, fingerprint reader) and you have one powerful machine. And it looks great too..my new favorite netbook. Let’s just hope the battery life is good. More pictures over at Aving.net.

Chippy writes: Techticker reports that it will be officially announced on the 13th (Sat?) and will have a price of $1140 and a 6-cell battery good enough for 6+hours.  This is Atom breaking out of its cage and Intel and notebook manufacturers definitely won’t be happy to see it but its definately going to happen. Users are realising that they prefer good-value, small form-factor and long battery life more than anything. It really wont suprise me to see the average size on notebooks come right down with users being happy with 10-12″ models with long battery life as a result of the netbook craze. If Atom is good enough for that then Intel and traditional laptop sales will suffer.