Asus Smellbook

You’ve got to admire Asus for pushing back the frontiers of laptop design. From the genuinely revolutionary Eee PC, which launched the whole Netbook craze, to the slightly odd bamboo-cased laptop there’s seems to be no end to its creativity, at least that was until we heard about the F6Ve series notebooks. This is a range of ‘fragranced’ laptops, that’s right, they smell, you can choose from a pink coloured ‘Floral Blossom model costing around £649, or a glossy ‘Musky Black machine, which starts at £799. Basic specs are a 13.3-inch screen Intel Centrino Core 2 processor, wi-fi, choice of 120, 160, 250 or 320Gb drives, up to 4Gb RAM, web cam and Vista pre-installed. Incidentally, someone at Asus has obviously been doing some research into smells and national characteristics and in the US you can get models entitled Aqua Ocean and Morning Dew – make of that what you will. Read more

40-Hour Laptop in Pipeline

Remember the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project? As you may recall the idea was to develop a laptop, costing less than $100, which would be given away to children in undeveloped countries. One unexpected spin-offs was the creation of a consumer market for compact low-cost mini laptops, or ‘netbooks’ typified by the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire One.

One of the brains behind OLPC was Mary Lou Jepsen (pictured right) who is the former head of display technologies at Intel, and she was responsible for the OLPC’s super low power, sunlight readable display. Now she has a new startup company, called Pixel Qi, with plans to start shipping a highly efficient screen, similar to the one in the OLPC, but for more conventional laptops. Read more

Elonex One T+ £99 PC, First Impressions

You may recall me mentioning the Elonex One PC back in February, a pocket PC that would sell for the astonishingly low price of £99. Well, at that time no samples were available but I was intrigued enough to send off my £10 deposit, on the promise that it would be delivered in July. Needless to say it never arrived and not only did the delivery date slip, in the meantime Elonex produced an upgraded design, called One t+ (almost certainly a rebadged CNM Minibook), which they offered to those who placed orders, at no extra cost. – the One T+ now costs £120 online. (The original One, with its quirky ‘upside down’ design always looked a bit suspect…) To cut a long story short, involving several unanswered emails and even more delayed delivery dates, mine has just been delivered. Read more

Eee PC Does it…

As you may know I’m a huge fan of the Asus Eee PC 700 and dashed out and bought one, with my own money I hasten to add, the moment they went on sale, late last year. This titchy laptop has become my constant travelling companion, it does everything I need when I’m out and about and the price, at around £200, set a new benchmark for pocket notebooks and spawned a rash of clones and copies.

So now we have the Eee PC 1000, which follows hard on the heels of the first Eee PC upgrade (Eee PC 900) launched just a few weeks ago. The key feature of the 1000 is a 10-inch screen, (the 900’s screen is 8.9 inches) and like the 900 it has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. Read more

$75 Laptop in the Pipeline?

We have spoken before about the laudable One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to supply laptops costing $100 to children in poor countries and which indirectly spawned the recent influx of cheap mini laptops, like the Asus Eee PC, Elonex one et al. Well. OLPC has now unveiled a mock-up of a future model, which could sell for as little as $75.

There’s no need to get too excited, the $100 target for the OLPC XO1 still hasn’t been achieved (it’s closer to $200…), but like its predecessor the XO-2, has some interesting features. These include dual touch and haptic (pressure) sensitive screens, both daylight (and indoor) viewable. Read more

New Eee PC from May

As you may know I’m a huge fan of the tiny Linux-based Asus Eee PC and went out and bought one with my own money I hasten to add the minute they were available, last year. It’s been a very happy partnership and this cute little PC has been all over the place with me on numerous press and family jaunts, and it has never let me down. The Wi-Fi always latches on first time, it has all of the applications I need, 3 USB ports, an SD card slot and an MS compatible office suite. A few tweaks here and there, install the KDE desktop and you have a near perfect travelling companion. But now the Eee 900 hoves into view. Read more

Dell to Shovel New Low-Cost Mobile Computers

System builder Dell plans on introducing some more low-cost offerings on the Asian market during this year. The announcement was made by a company executive during yesterday’s meeting.

“We’ve been pretty much a leader in the mid- and high-end price bands. We haven’t played as strongly in the lower price bands,” said Steve Felice, president of Dell Asia-Pacific. The new policy will bring some new models of low-cost notebooks for both average users and small businesses on the Asian markets.

The company has previously hinted at a low-cost notebook PC to compete with Asustek’s Eee PC, but Felice refused to elaborate on this issue and only said that Dell is currently working on a new notebook offering that will hit the retailers’ shelves with various price tags. Read more