Those lightweight machines

For a couple of days now I’ve been goggling on some UMPCs (Ultra-Mobile PC) on the internet. Lately I figured that I need a secondary laptop for use with my lecture notes, university work and that means a small and very portable one. What caught my eye last few months was the ASUS Eee PC 701, fully equipped with:

• 7″ display
• 0.89kg
• 4GB SSD (Solid State Drive)
• About 3 hours battery life
• Pre-installed Linux Xandros OS (Win XP optional)
• Built-in camera, microphone, speakers, 802.11b/g, ethernet, USB ports, SD card reader

Just look at the specifications. And all this comes with a £169 price tag on Amazon UK. It seems so promising and from the reviews I’ve read, this device is extremely portable and really for the people who’s looking for a second laptop.

Other UMPCs on my list include the HP Mini-note and Dell Inspiron 910 (very soon to be released!).

Now, the HP Mini-note is very sleek and stylish in its own way with durable aluminium case on the outside. The inside features an 8.9″ glossy screen display with 92% full size keyboard. It can hold up to 160GB of HD storage equipped with DriveGuard (preventing HD damages due to motion) and 2GB of RAM. Linux or Windows Vista OS optional. The best part is that it weighs a mere 1.19kg! I think a few inch extra width screen and almost full-size keyboard are quite an advantage compared to the Eee PC but sadly the battery life sucks – about 1 to 2 hours with 3 cell battery. The price tag is almost twice as expensive as the Eee PC i.e. £300 but this UMPC is undeniably sexy.

Now lastly, the new Dell Inspirion 910. It’s been rumoured to be released on 22 August but it seems the day has passed and no news has been mentioned since! This piece comes with three colours; black, white and red and has specifications:

• 8.9″ screen display (1024 x 600 pixels)
• ~1kg
• 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB SSD
• Linux Ubuntu 8.04 or Windows XP OS
• Card Reader, 802.11b/g, ethernet, 3 USB ports, built-in camera,

The best of all, the price tag starts from US$299. That is equivalent to around £165. It is expected to be released late of this month or early September.

Hopefully I’ll be getting one of these on late September or early October. At least I’m not in the rush to decide and this also means I can buy some time to compare the pros and cons and finally see which one will really be perfect for me. I can’t say that I can wait but for most part, I just want to try Linux once for awhile. Not that I’m unhappy with Leopard OS X. Truly, I’m very pleased with it.

~ by Adi on August 24, 2008.