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Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/17/everex_announces_9in_cloudbook/

Everex follows Asus Eee to announce 9in sub-notebook

Unreleased CloudBook follow-up named

By Tony Smith

Posted in Hardware, 17th January 2008 12:22 GMT

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Not content with mounting a serious challenge to Asus' elfin Eee PC, US manufacturer Everex this week said it will follow up its 7in CloudBook sub-notebook with larger models later in the year.

To be fair, these are all enhancements Asus has already pledged to make to the Eee PC line-up. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it announced it would release 8in and 9in notebooks Eees later this year [1]. In November 2007, it promised this year will see a desktop version [2].

Everex CloudBook

Everex's CloudBook: aka Packard Bell EasyNote XS20, aka Belinea s.book

So Everex - owned by Taiwanese manufacturer First International (FIC) - is really just playing catch-up. So are other Taiwanese companies, with the likes of Acer, Gigabyte and others hinting they're going to be tackling the low-cost laptop and ultra-cheap desktop markets in 2008. Many of these products will be based on Intel's 'Shelton' platform [3].

Everex's first CloudBook, the CE1200V, will go on sale in the States on 25 January for an Eee-matching $399. Like the Eee, the CloudBook comes with a 7in, 800 x 480 display, 512MB of DDR 2 memory and a version of Linux pre-installed, but it also packs in 30GB of HDD storage and a VIA C7-M processor rated at 1.2GHz. The Eee's 900MHz Intel Celeron M chip actually runs at 630MHz.

Everex also has a desktop version [4] in the works, the gPC mini, annouced at CES last week.

According to a Computerworld report [5], the 9in CloudBook may be called the DevBook and will incorporate a touchscreen display. It too will run the Linux-derived gOS and be priced at $400-500. The target audience: Linux software developers.

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