Amazing! Thanks to the 600+ people that came through the live session last night. It was a pleasure to see so many people involved and an honour to have JKK, Sascha and Joanna on the line from various parts of the world. Thanks! We’ll be doing it again soon although I can’t promise to do another 6-hour marathon!
The recorded sessions are available (if you have a few hours free!!) and the first, overview session (62mins), is embedded below. [Article continues below the video]
The HP Mininote has faded into the background recently due to the hype over Acer, ASUS, MSI and Dell netbooks but remains a favourite in terms of design. A quick poll on the live session the other night revealed that the majority of chat room members think its the best looking of all the netbooks. I tend to agree. As a netbook, its very attractive. The original target market though was schools and that’s why it was built to spec, with its tough chassis and splashproof keyboard, rather than a price.
According to HP’s Jerry Chong, (commercial notebooks business development manager) HP will offer a cheaper version. There’s no word about the possible changes in it but what Yahoo are saying about removing the ruggedness, sounds about right. Maybe it will be a lot lighter too which will be a nice side-effect.
The question remains though about weather HP will re-visit the CPU. If Intel drops a near-ready Diamondville board on their doorstep at a good price and VIA aren’t ready with Nano, it would make sense to go with Atom. Why? Because reports are coming in from all over the place that Atom is doing a great job with Vista. I’m even experiencing it myself here with the M912X. More about that later though.
Coming up in the next 24-hours, Ben’s review of the HP Mininote. In the meantime, you can brush up on HP Mininote specs in the HP Mininote product page.
Mobilx, the well-connected resellers in Hungary, got hold of a demo M912 netbook from Gigabyte yesterday and this morning at about 10am, it was at my home office. Thanks for sending it over guys. Much appreciated.
So here’s the unboxing video and overview. As usual, i’ll be putting my testing notes in the forum (see this thread) and I guess i’ll have some first impressions to post up tomorrow. Tonight though, its testing time – LIVE! Yes, I’ll be bearing all on camera again so that you can check that I’m not cheating with my CrystalMark tests! Join me on the live channel at UMPCPortal.com/live from about 6pm GMT [Update: Live session is over. Recordings are available here.] and feel free to ask questions. JKK will probably drop in with his touchscreen 901 and I’ll also have the SC3 and MSI Wind along with a stack of UMPCs if you have related questions.
For the HQ WMV version, see my Blip.tv page. For more information on the M912, see both the M912S and M912X details side-by-side on the comaprison page. The model i’m testing here is the M912X.
Mobilx have kindly run off a set of images of the Gigabyte M912 for us and, even more kindly, have sent us a demo device to review. We’re expecting that in our hands tomorrow or on Friday.
Just as a recap, the M912 is a netbook with a few special features. 1280×800 convertible 8.9" touchscreen. ExpressCard slot and disk options up to 160GB. It also ships with Vista OS options. The large-capacity 3-cell, 32wh battery means there’s a possibility of 4-hour working or 8 hours on an extended battery but we’ll wait to see what happens in our tests before promising you anything though! Gigabyte have managed to keep the whole package in the netbook pricing range which makes it an interesting option.
Oh, one more thing. A delay. It looks like the first M912 device are not going to be available until early September. We’re hearing whispers of Atom shortages which doesn’t surprise me at all.
Take a peek at the images. Apologies for the reduced color on the large versions.
Full gallery here. For more info on the M912, see the product page.
I was just reading Kevin’s article about how big the netbook market has gotten in just a year. It’s really amazing to me how the category evolved and expanded. I have maybe once seen a ultra mobile PC in use in the wild. That was someone using a UX in a coffee shop. But that’s it. Now however, netbooks seem to be all over the place. In school I regularly see people typing away on Eees. Just last week when going through Airport security a woman behind me pulled an Eee 900 out of her handbag. What surprised me the most though, is my visit to the mall here in Italy. I went into a small electronics store and looked at the laptops on display. There were two Acer 15′ notebooks which looked pretty old and as if they were sitting in the store for a long time. In a big display cabinet however where 3 Olidata JumPCs proudly displaying their 299 Euro price. The JumPC is an Italian Eee-like device that runs on the 900mhz celeron and is marketed at children. I think it might actually be the Classmate design. Definitely not what I expected to find in such a small store! I might have bought if only it wasn’t slightly bulky and err… orange :)
Elonex highlighted 4 new devices at Computex. No-one reported seeing them and there were no ‘live’ images to be seen anywhere.
One of the four has now been outed though. Its the OneT, which was advertised as the OneTwoLite at Computex.
Specs are thin on the ground but The Register seem to think it will have a 400Mhz processor. Mmm. Its small, its cheap. I’m sure it find find a place somewhere. Could be useful as a remote desktop? If I ever get a full set of specs, I’ll add it to the database.
Check out The Register if you’re in the market for a low-end mini.
JKK knows the Eee PC’s like the back of his hand so if you’re interested in the 901 at all, head on over to his site. He’s got one with him on holiday (!) and plans to start testing and reporting. His first words are:
Battery life is goood.. looks like easy 5 hours on my use.
Eee 901 has the best battery life compared to other netbooks
The question is, is it much better than the Eee PC 900 16G that’s going for $399 on Amazon.com?
As Joanna mentions in her article at Laptop Magazine, it takes a lot to stand out in the netbook market right now. Yesterday I went through my own thoughts on the top netbook devices and had to leave out the Dell E, Gigabyte M912X and ECS G10L. In the last 24-hours we’ve had the final specs and EU pricing for the M912X and see that its differentiating itself with the addition of a hi-res touchscreen, ExpressCard slot and large HDD. Today, we have the information that the ECS G10L will try and differentiate itself by having two screen sizes and 3G options. On first glance, it looks like a copy of the Dell and Acer strategy. Even MSI will have a second screen-size soon but there’s something else that’s significant here.
ECS are a contract manufacturer and can offer mobile data carriers their own branded editions. With Linpus Lite as the OS (their second OS win along with the Acer Aspire) carriers can put their brand on the OS and even get some control of the application build. The big differentiator with the G10L is probably not in the specifications but in the final-product package. Expect it to be subsidised heavily to get people into their second 2-year carrier contract and expect it to be marketed heavily too.
Laptop magazine have interviewed ECS and provide some new information about pricing, availability and territorial builds. Its an interesting read.
Laptop Magazine. Interview with ECS vice president of sales, Henry Kwan.
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