Asus Eee PC S101 luxury netbook Asus pretty much started the whole Small, Cheap Computer ball rolling with its first Eee PC just over a year ago. But now there are hundreds of the darn things, from every manufacturer imaginable, so how does Asus ensure it stays at the forefront of the market? By going high end, it seems - which is what it has done with its …
It seems to have been a very low-key announcement, but Toshiba have launched an SCC of their own, Ubuntu Remix powered, for £249 inc. VAT (http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/innovation/product/Toshiba-NB100-11R/1058543/). I had a play with one last month at a conference and it's a rather nice thing. If I was still in the market for an SCC (I was an early Eee buyer), this would be a serious contender.
But that does mean that the S101, pretty as it is, is not cheaper than equivalent Toshiba PCs. Sony, though, seem to be sticking to the expensive side of the street!
... because its brown and she loves brown and green things 8-)
If the Acer Aspire One had their Golden Brown version available in the UK I would have bought that .. instead I have a £180 AAO 110-Aw + £50 7-8 hour battery (oh yeah that's more like it) + £10 extra 1Gig memory + £10 extra 16Gb SDHC + £5/month for 1Gig of Three 3G mobile Intertread.
And if I want it in Brown .. well I'd get a gell skin (fablon / SBP to you 8-)
Actually its going to undergo a colour transformation at some point so that the hackintosh Apple logo appears on the lid (and maybe even glows 8-) .. yep OSX is very nice on the AAO (just don't put the lid down - yet!)
For cheap, cute and useable ... Acer Aspire One is still the best.
For ultimate loveliness and portability in an S(c)C then maybe try the HP Mini 1000.
If the screen was 1280x800 and it had the dual core Atom I'd buy one today...
I suspect some people will miss the 3G built in too, seems an omission on the top of the line device.
And is the Linux versions 64GB SSD as fast as the one reviewed here? If so the Linux version is a massively better deal... it's actually quite easy to install XP from USB.
Which bit of 'two hundred quid' are they having difficulty with? Small, cheap? They're having a laugh... so it's got fast disk access - big deal. It's not worth three hundred quid extra.
I can imagine the sales board meeting: Hey guys, no-one's got any money for luxuries, what shall we do? I know, let's fragment our existing market with another computer... but here's the clever bit - let's sell it at two and half times what it should be!
totally agree m8, that's why i today just took delivery of a nice shiny hp 2133 with a 1280 x 800 screen!
check this, for only £227 inc vat! (with linux, but XP's gonna have to go on there)..
http://www.dabs.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=53dd#specifications
..with a 9-inch ("8.9") display, only just over 1" smaller screen than this tart.
don't take my word for that retailer, it's just that it's them that's punting out these at this price. they're not bad tho ;)
HP made the newer 2133's with 600 verticle res, but if you can find the older models (like this one on the link), they still have the 800px screens..
problem for me right now, is that the 1.2ghz VIA prob won't be enough (to run DJ software "serato"), so i'm gonna have to upgrade to at least a 1.6 or maybe even a 2.0ghz.
i'll post pics and details on my forum ;)
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net./forum
Why would anyone, especially geeks, in their right mind even contemplate ANY of these small netbooks? They are utter crap, I've used a couple and to be perfectly honest I'd much rather use an IBM X30/X31/X42 etc. They are not that much bigger, they are about the same weight...and you can pick them up on Ebay for about the same money - if not cheaper. Its a no brainer. Seriously. Stop all this hyperbole about these netbooks!
I think Asus scared themselves with the EEE PC, it made people realise that useful computers didn't have to be big and expensive, and although it sold it large numbers it put downward pressure on pricing. Since them they've done everything they can to try to move the price points ever higher and back to full sized laptop territory. However without any sort of sweetener such as a 1280x900 screen, it's just not going to sell.
yup. I too went for the 2133. 199 squid from misco. 15 squid for a 2gb simm.
ok, the C7-m is not the quickest, but with a striped down XP, latest graphics drivers, etc I am sitting here using it now as my main work PC and its bloody great. I even run an XP vmware image on it running the full rational suite of stuff no bother a baw.
Its great for SD video too. Sure, can't do 720p, but apart from that its bloody awesome.
The screen is just the mutts. Why anyone would settle for 600 vertical I can't understand.. even my first P90 did 1024x768 back in 95.
Also, crappish as the chrome9 chipset is, its better than most netbooks and runs older stuff lilke RTCW and Unreal at 1280x768 smooth as could be :-)
And a great keyboard, solid aluminium and magnesium case and chassis (no plastic crap)... it's a ruddy bargain imho.
I mean; How Much???!!!
Get an Acer Aspire One and a couple of tins of metallic spray paint FFS.
Whether or not you want to then add a GB of memory (peanuts to buy and half an hour to install despite Acer not making it easy for you) and a spare battery (bigger peanuts but still not 200+ quid) and spend a little time tweaking the drive settings so you have about the same performance is up to you.
That's over twice what I paid on eBay, two weeks ago, for a nice second hand Thinkpad X31 and 2GB of memory and a new disk drive ('cos I don't trust second hand ones) and a slip case. I still love and use my Eee 701, but the X31 is far, far better than the larger netbooks.
And the Eee S101 is brown. Brown? Brown????????!!!!???????
Paris, because she costs a bit too and doesn't have much style either
I'm sure 170 dpi would be pretty unusable for many people. It'd be no use at all for the applications I keep on my Thinkpad, unless I strapped the screen to my face.
You can certainly change the font sizes in a browser, but not everything is adjustable. What about the web sites that have sections of text written on .gifs? My bank would be unreadable for a start. Setting the OS dpi to compensate would drop any benefit gained from the extra res' in the first place, and as before, this doesn't work with everything.
Oh, and the VIA CPUs used in the HPs are particularly shit. Let's not get carried away with what these things can do just yet.
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