After the splash made by Asus’s EeePC series, other branded manufacturers, such as Acer, MSI, HP and Dell, have come up with their own mini notes in succession promptly, hoping to snatch a big share of this growing sub-notebook market.

While people are holding out for next branded better mini-note, I have come across a non-branded one, named MiniQ, manufacturer by a China company, which I think should deserve a good attention and favor. There are many reasons for me to say so, but the primary one is always the price. It only costs $ 500 US! Oh, forgot to mention that MiniQ is a 10-inch notebook. Yeah, check the price of EeePC 1000 quickly. It’s more expensive by 100 bucks!

MiniQ is cheap in price, but it doesn’t mean that it’s also cheap in quality. It offers a 10.2-inch bright screen of 1024 x 600 resolution, which is rather excellent for internet browsing. What’s most exciting is that it comes with a 80GB SATA HDD, as every other normal laptop does.  Other features fall into Pros and Cons as followed:

Pros:

• Cost competitive

• Light and mobile

• Satisfying storage-80 GB SATA HDD

• Sleek look and sturdy design.

• Brilliant screen quality - clear, bright, and crisp 8.1 inch WXGA screen

• Gigabit Ethernet as a standard

• Excellent for office tasks when using Windows XP/Office 2007

• Excellent for Web Browsing

• Has an Express Card Slot, not available on many Ultra Portables

• Internal SD card reader

• Hard drive and RAM are user-upgradable (for those of you that are geeks and wish to do so)

• Good Audio and Video playback

Cons:

• The life of the 3-cell battery is often less than 2 hours

• Keyboard

• Manufacturer’s touchpad driver could use some tweaking

Here’s a comparison table of MiniQ with other known mini-notes, from which you can see that MiniQ is really not that bad.

Yeah, Asus EEE PC has made a good start. And now you have more choices. Which one will you choose?

1.  Acer Aspire One

Specs:

• 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display
• 1.6GHz Atom N270
• 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (expandable)
• 1.3 megapixel camera, SDHC and multi-format media readers
• 802.11b/g, Ethernet, three USB 2.0, VGA, and 3.5mm audio out
• One free mini PCI slot for WWAN
• 80GB hard drive (with XP) or 8GB solid state (with Linux)
• 2.5 or 5 hours on 3 or 6-cell batteries in XP model, 3 or 7 hours on Linux
• 1kg (2.2 pounds)

Colors:  blue, white (with black, red, and pink models coming soon)

Availability: June

2.  MSI Wind PC

Specs: 

Price: $ 399 US for the Linux model, and $499 US for XP.

Availability: June 

3.  Asus EEE PC 901 & 1000 

Specs:

Price:

• Eee PC 901: NT$16,988 or about $559 (on sale now in Taiwan)
• Eee PC 1000(H): NT$18,988 or about $625
• Eee PC 1000: NT$19,988 or about $658

Availability: June

4. HP 2133

Specs:

Released in October last year, the initial version of Eee PC–the Eee PC 700 Series (mainly the 701 series) employed 7-inch display and then the 900 serials, which came out last April, had an 8.9-inch display.

It’s said that the Eee PC 900 was originally expected in the COMPUTEX fair this June, but it had to be pushed to the market ahead of schedule because of the extraordinary momentum that the HP 2133 had brought about. Hence, the battle began earlier then we thought. It reminds me of the same case between Microsoft and Sony. When Microsoft announced their plan of Xbox, Sony immediately released PlayStation 2, which was still in the R&D stage. This is also an active action to meet the challengers.

OK, let me get to today’s discussion. I just got the news that the Eee PC 10-inch series was officially named Eee PC 1001, different then that I thought as Eee PC 1000.

This Eee PC 1001 has a 10-inch display, 10.6 inches to be exact. I guess the 0.6 inches should be the result of economic cutting. It’s alright though, since the size of a notebook’s display is always an approximate figure.

But what’s confusing is that Asus claimed not long ago that 10-inch was the dividing ridge between a normal notebook and an Eee PC, however, they are now saying that they’ll breakthrough the 10-inch borderline and launch the 11-inch Eee PC (sure this 11-inch falls into any figure between 11.0 and 11.9). If this is real, isn’t Asus somehow inconsistent?

Well, I can offer an explanation here for Asus if they don’t mind. Since the 11-inch Eee PC is positioned as the choicest goods, its price will not be that “easy” any more. In fact, this is exactly happening to Eee PC 900 now. Hence, the 11-inch Eee PC should not be catalogued into the Eee PC series. This is the only far-fetched explanation I can think of.

However, I have another assumption. This 11-inch news should be a marketing strategy. By releasing favorable news of the possibility of upgrading the specifications, Asus is hoping to tie the customers to the Eee PC series and stay away from other ULC notebooks.

This is very much similar with IBM’s practice. When IBM was selling big systems, it always gave quick responses that it would soon launch the same product before long whenever its competitors introduced a better machine or something with characteristics. In fact IBM did not always fulfill its promises, but it successfully aroused expectations from its customers, leaving the impression to them that there was no need to shift to other brand as IBM would soon have the same product. Just stick to IBM and wait! This was IBM’s strategy to prevent the defection of its customers. It worked rather well in those years!

In all, Asus has provided the roadmap of its future products. Now it all depends on his execution ability.

It’s said that it’ll be released officially in about half a month, but someone in Taiwan ( http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=233&t=582599&last=5695637) managed to get one already.

Let’s check the photos and info he provided:

Almost the same packaging with EEE 701

“12GB SSD , 1GB DDR2 , Intel Mobile CPU & Chipset , WiFi 802.11b/g , 1.3M Camera” written on the box

Accessories: protective bag, battery, AC adapter, instructions, etc.

AC Adapter: 12V 3A

Battery

Here comes the machine

Right side: SD/SDHC Card Reader USBx2 VGA-Out

Left side: Lan port USBx1 Head-out Mic-in

It looks very nice generally.

Speakers in the bottom

It’s a little bigger than 701

1.3 M Camera

Keyboard is wider, thus easier and more comfortable to use.

Conclusion:

Compared with 701, 900 is also of a weight less then 1KG, but it has the following upgrades:

• screen: 7″—>8.9″
• RAM: 512M—>1G
• storage: 4G—>12G
• webcam: 0.3M pixel—>1.3M pixel

900 will surely set off anther rush. Let’s wait and see how the world will do with such a masterpiece by Asus.

Because of my job, which’s a bit weird I have to add, I have to deal with Bare Systems. I have played many of them and now have IBM S50, 2*Acer L320, Apple TV and some other palmtop systems at hand. I should say that I am quite experienced at this area. I have spent NT 300,000$ (about US 10,000$) on Bare Systems for personal use up till now this year. What a geek! But after seeing this Asus EP20, I couldn’t help searching my wallet. …

Asus released EEE desktop PC EP10 and EP20 following EEE laptop PC.

Some specs:

Weight: 1.5 KG
Size: 2 L
1/12 size & 1/5 weight of Tower PC
OS: Linux
Compact design to save space to the greatest extent
Processor: Intel Mobile
CPU: Dothan, Intel Celeron M, 900 MHZ
RAM: 1GB
HDD: 80GB
Superb slim DVD read/write driver
High quality HiFi speaker
Good enough performance

The same mould and design are applied to P22, which costs around NT 20,000 (663 USD)

The most prominent feature of EP10 and EP20 is that they include 2.5” SATA HDD, which is smaller by 0.7 L compared using a 3.5” HDD. So, in terms of size, it’s more like an Apple TV or Mac Mini. However, Apple TV comes with 40 GB HDD and 256 MB DRAM whilst EP 10 has 80 GB HDD and 1GB DRAM (no wireless network).

Hence, personally, I think EP10 or EP20 is a good choice for router, NAS, Media player, Voip PBX or Mini web serve.

Anyhow, this is just for your reference. Here are what I’ve got:

The weight of EP10

Comparison: Apple TV, Acer L 320 and EP10

As rumors go around that the Eee PC 900 will be available in the coming June first in Asia, here I’ve got a preview for you to ease your itch.

Don’t be too excited!!

Enjoy!

source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY2azHo0LAU

Author: A-Lang, alang[dot]hsu[at]gmail[dot]com
source
Read the rest of this entry »