2008 - The Year of Mini PC - Which one of these will you get?
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Starting with announcements last year, and first version of EEE PC’s and OLPC’s hitting the market, the world of under-powered Sub-Notebook mobile PC’s is getting quite a stir.
A lot of people are in the market for getting one, but the choice has now become really hard.
Here’s the current line up of all of these Mini PC’s which came out, and some newer modes and brands coming out this year. If any new one is announced or if I’ve missed any, let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
OLPC - One Laptop Per Child Project’s XO Laptop
Starting at the beginning, one of the first real products which users could buy was the OLPC. The mission of the One Laptop Per Child association was to develop a low-cost laptop ($100 dollars) - the XO Laptop - and to provide the children around the world with a computer. The incentive was to buy one for a kid in a 3rd World country and get one for yourself. It worked more less well even though it ended up costing way more than $100 USD, but the cause was good and specs were not too shabby either.
Wireless B/G/S network (supporting Mesh Networking) which enables kids to chat with other users on the closed network and share single Internet connection.
OS: Fedora-based Linux
Comes with: microphone and camera integrated and runs on AMD’s Geode LX700 CPU. Has a 1GB Flash Drive and 256 MB of Ram.
All in all - this was and is a nice computer for kids around the world who had nothing before, but how I see it, the main thing this little laptop did is start a little revolution.
Link: http://www.laptopgiving.org/en/index.php
EEE PC - Easy to learn, Easy to Work, Easy to play PC (EEE 900)
Before we knew it, ASUS announced the super famed EEE PC last year. People eagerly awaited and as soon as it came out it was instantly sold out at many places. In just five months Asus has sold over 1 milion units! Since the new model with a larger screen and more memory has been introduced, I will not talk here about the first generation of Asus’ EEE PC (the 700 series), but rather about the Second Gen EEE Pc, the 900 Series.
The new version of EEE 900 was officially launched in Hong-Kong on April 16, 2008 starting at about $513 USD (in US it will cost a bit more most likely). While it is a tinny bit larger than it’s predecessor, it does offer more. It has a multi-touch trackpad (similar to MacBook Air) allowing two-finger scrolling and zooming via the “pinch” gesture. It is also finally available in both Linux (Xandros) and Windows XP versions.
The Linux version is named EeePC 900 and comes with a 20GB of storage (4GB built in and 16GB flash), while the XP version is named EeePC900 Win - and it comes with 12GB of storage (4GB built in and 8GB flash). Microsoft Works and Windows Live Suite come pre-installed on the Windows version. (more…)
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