Competition
Looks as if someone has finally got the formula right *&* managed to keep the cost down - id say this could be the first serious competition the Eee has had to contend with!
Acer has launched its Eee PC wannabe, the Aspire One, pitching the product to Brits at just £199 including VAT - even though it's "not a low-cost notebook", according to the company. The One's specs largely match those of its rivals: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor; 512MB of 533MHz DDR 2 memory with a single SO-Dimm slot for …
Without question this beats the Eee hands down. It has everything that people wanted from the Eee 900 series with a price that is better than the Eee 700 series.
It was the price which got most people interested in the Eee, it might have attracted buyers at twice the price, but it wouldn't have been nearly as popular. The price made the Eee close to disposable, it was a device you could literally throw into a bag, carry everywhere and if it was damaged or stolen, then so be it. Asus didn't realise this when they launch the updated version and neither did any of the Eee rivals, they priced it far too high.
I came very close to buying the original Eee but stock issues thwarted that impulse buy and instead is looks like my money will go to Acer. I'll wait a couple of days for more details and images to appear, but it seems to fit my needs precisely.
Well it's got the Eee PC licked in the looks dept: that metallic blue one is very tasty, you wouldn't be ashamed pulling that out of a rucksack on a train would you?!
And to be honest the 8GB SSD version would run XP quite happily (self-installed natch), just use the memory or USB slots for some 'user' storage capacity and you're good to go. I wouldn't splurge the extra £100 just for a HD and XP Home.
Paris, 'cos they both have the looks AND are really cheap.
I don't know why you're complaining about the battery life - it's better than the Eee 900. Unless of course you compare to the Eee with the smaller, less power hungry screen..
What's the price of the extended battery? 7 Hours raises this almost to a pick up and go device.
Really, it looks like a fantastic spec for the price. There's 600 vertical pixels so it'll be fine with XP, Linux or web browsing. 8GB is ok for solid state. A media slot and PCI are great features.
The other limitations you can live with, given the price..
Having spent days reading up on the Asus EEEPC, deciding whether to take the plunge, waiting for the 901 reviews to confirm specs etc, I decided to take a walk up Tottenham Court Road this lunchtime to have a play on one in one of the stores.
I'm glad I did because I will have been sorely disappointed by what is fast becoming an overpriced toy (a bit like certain footballers i could mention ... and their wives ...).
I'd kept an eye on the alternatives, and now i read this review of the Acer ... as already pointed out, someone has listened to the public, got the spec nerly spot on, and is trying to flog it at under £200. Not only that, but it looks as good as the Asus beach bird, especially in blue.
As soon as i can get my hands on one of these, i think I will be parting with my hard earned cash, as £200 is much easier to stomach that £350 (ish) for the Asus that originally had my name on, but had kit on it that I dont really want.
Considering the ASUS 901 new spec just released and the relatively high cost I think think that ACER have got an EEEPC killer here.
Plus I would agree the ACER is lovely looking even without any accompanying lady shapes 8-)
Fingers crossed that the £199 cost includes all taxes and is an RRP which can get discounted and that they have plenty of stock!! Its very sad to see the EEEPC 700 that I bought for £219 inc VAT in December to have shot up to over £250 + delivery due to supply issues ... please let ACER learn from that and have the stock ready to roll.
I really wanted to get my hands on an EeePC especially after having a play at a recent Ubuntu Linux Demo day, although now I've seen this I'm glad I've waited.
This really does meet the spec I've been looking for. Finally something I can stick in a bag and take with me when I'm out and about. Sure I have a work laptop (Dell Latitude D610) which I use when I'm on call but it's to heavy to take everywhere. Something like this would fit the bill perfectly.
I can't help but think that with all these machines coming out now, the prices are going to keep going down which has got to be good.
Any details of what Linux distro will be pre-installed?
Rob
My only requirement for a new laptop is that it comes in different colours, so the Acer automatically gets my vote.
Why not racing green? Sunflower yellow? Cheap-looking gold effect for the gangstas? This is the age of personalised products right? So where the hell is my personalised Acer?
However, I wish people would stop making pink electronics. A pink laptop simply looks like a giantess's powder compact.
Paris, because she probably already owns a pink one.
I've been in the market for a micro-lappy recently, but see no point in going over £250, which only left me with the Eee 701 and its just *slightly* too small screen.
This thing beats its arse clean off. Unless there is something seriously wrong with this expect it to FLY off the shelves soon enough.
See you all in the queue.
According to CNET, it comes with Linpus Lite Linux. This is a Taiwanese distro based on Fedora, with a front end like the Eee.
WikiPedia says (crosses himself) "Linpus was designed specifically to fully support the Asian market" and The Linpus site shows that they provide a Chinese version of Open Office. I assume this will be changed for the target markets.
Personally I would have preferred (X)Ubuntu, but it should be easy enough to change.
Yes, it is nice. My son and I both have Acer laptops already and the quality isn't bad. I now have to persuade my wife she needs a new laptop (I don't think I could get away with buying a third laptop for myself) then "borrow" it. Hope she doesn't choose pink!
Asus completely missed why everyone flipped over the EEE701 when they brought the new models out, pretty much the *only* thing they had to do was sort out a slightly larger screen, everything else was OK at that price.
The same goes with the few others that arrived to compete, they all just pwned by Acer and this little beauty, spot on spec by the looks of it and at that "impulse buy" price of under £200. Sure I think it may benefit from a little more RAM, but didn't I read they wisely have an empty slot inside, sorted!
The wife wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday later this month, I think I just found it :]
I've had two Acer laptops and they've been great, though my Ferrari's power brick died after a ceiling leak (don't ask). That thing is small, cheap, looks great, does the job and I'm willing to bet it's more robust than the Asus. I want one.
But do I need one... I already have an Athena. C'mon, Reg Readers. Help me justify this latest impulse purchase.
I think that's the game-changing aspect of these devices. The original eee was /almost/ what I wanted - just needed a bigger screen and 3G for the same price. Strange that Asus decided to move away from the "so cheap, so why not?" point and left it to Acer to move in.
All we need now is some canny mobilecos to flog these at a discount (or even free) with a mobile broadband subscription and they start becoming no-brainers for cheap, portable always-on web access without the constraints of a smartphone's too-small size.
I can certainly see myself getting one by the end of the year, and then I can do my El Reg/Digg/Slashdot/Facebook spodding on the train home and make my other half happy by spending time with her in the evening and not the interweb.
Finally, someone's got the formula spot on! It's such a shame it had to be Acer... we got about 100 of their laptops in at work and on probably 50% of them the trackpad buttons have fallen apart. Can't blame cack handed users either because mine did the same thing, even though I rarely use the buttons. They were snazzy, but the build quality was horrible, and as such I've sworn off ever buying an Acer product again. Such a shame...
Not only is this cheaper, but I want to point something out. The HP would have been THE machine, except, they crippled it with a very low end GFX / CPU combo.
The reason this will be the killer is is simple.
Intel's 945GSE chipset in particular the gfx, which while not Nvidia/ATI level, beats the living daylights out of the awful offerings on the other machines.
Out of all the UMPCs in this grouping, that alone is the reason to take one of these over the EEE, Wind, HP, Openbook, and others.
The HP is the nearly machine, but not being able to use the webcam fully, not even coping with playing back youtube, and the other 'issues' mean its a miss. A shame, because in quite a few ways, the HP was nearly there. If only this hardware spec had been inside the HP case.
Competition in this area, gleefully for anyone willing to hold on to their hard earned £$ will mean specs rise, prices fall, and in months, not years, we'll see refreshes coming to wipe the floor with whats currently shipping
From what I can gather the Linux used on this is Linpus Lite.
Does anyone know if this has a VPN client available, and also an RDP client?
It'd be a great gadget to carry around when on call, to be able to vpn into the office, and remote into a server etc. (I currently manage to do this in an emergency from a treo, so a small, portable unit with a real screen that can do this would be a BIG plus)
I know a number of other distros have this ability, I've used them myself in the past, but I can't seem to find an answer on the all knowing interweb as to if there's a client that will run on Linpus (I assume there is, but need confirmation)
Thanks for you answers (or flames I suppose)
I wish I'd waited a couple of weeks for this little beauty. It has the big screen that would make the Web a bit less frustrating and those looks - for less than £200 there's a machine that looks as sexy as something from Apple or Sony.
Hmmm can I persuade the office I need to do a comparison of various sublappies?
<>Interesting twist on the Microsoft tax: if you want a decent size hdd, you gotta pay for Windows!</>
I don't think we are ready for direct comparisons yet. Once the industry has been sued comprehensively or a starter company can get one in that is direct competition to companies that have made us all pay, things could get interesting.
If one of these goeralongwiths puts out a machine with equal rites and the same price, M$ and ALL the computer sellers that only supplied M$ machines, can be sued successfully.
We'll just haveto wait for the Ubuntu or RedHat people to bring one out.
Now THAT would be interesting. Linux made, with a choice, at market prices.
The phrase "so we ain't going to" comes to mind. Pity the Register can't get it in print. I bet they must have heard it said "off the record" though.
Nice looking beast, shame its supplied by a company who told me I'd invalidated my machine's warranty by installing XP over Vista. The same company who took three weeks to repair a backlight on a two month old Aspire laptop and returned it when I wasn't in, so it went back to Acer to be repaired again. Not to mention the other 1 year old Aspires I have here with failed DVD and hard drives....
Having had experience of Acer's warranty service, I really couldn't recommend the brand to anyone. That said, it's a £200 machine with no moving parts (Linux version) and a low-wattage CPU designed to not need much cooling. And with Linux it's very little hassle to rescue your system i(both config and data) if the non-storage hardware croaks. Mo MS Anti-copy bollox to get around.
But ideally it'll just force ASUS up make some price cuts, and I want to see an Eee 1000 before settling on a 900.