Elonex £99 Eee PC rival to arrive in June
Pay £10 to get to the front of the queue
Elonex has rolled out its sub-£100 Linux-based laptop, the One, but it looks like it's going to prove harder get hold of than Asus Eee PC has been.
Elonex One: reserve yours now
Elonex today unveiled black, pink, green, white and silver Ones to whet buyers' appetites. However, it admitted that the initial batch with comprise just 200,000 machines, none of which will go out to punters until June.
Want to get in the queue nice and early? Then Elonex will happily take a tenner and reserve one for you.
Like the Eee (below), the Elonex One has a special chum
Elonex at least confirmed the machine's specs: 7in, 800 x 480 display; 300MHz LNX Code 8 processor; 128MB of DDR 2 memory; 1GB solid-state drive; 802.11b/g Wi-FI; 10/100Mb/s Ethernet port; two USB 2.0 ports; and a four-hour, three-cell battery.
Elonex said the keyboard is not only removable but "splash-proof", and both halves of the machine sport a "mouse emulator".
The LNX Code 8 processor is new to us, too, but at 300MHz, it's not going to challenge the Eee's 900MHz Intel chip much. It runs the Linos version of Linux.
COMMENTS
Please remember
The Elonex One is aimed at the education sector. In addition, a price tag of £99 does believe it or not limit what the device can and cannot do - a larger screen, better battery life would be nice, but for half the price of an Eee, I'm not going to complain about imperfections. It may not be the right choice for those who have the bank balance to go with something like the Asus, but for a student such as myself the price tag is perfect, and will indeed save my shoulders from over-load as I epically fail to transport my current 15.4" notebook from A -B on my delicate 5ft 2" frame. I've seen a lot of commenting on the way the Elonex looks - but it won't stop me typing on the train if I have work to be done; I don't really care what other people think. As for the models - both should be male. And topless. And be covered in a fair bit of lotion to...er...y'know, protect their skin. Then maybe I'll get back to you.
My company was in the stand next to Elonex...
Elonex's stand was moved next to ours at short notice, which was nice for us because they generated a lot of traffic! It also meant I got to have a good play with the ElonexONE and chatted to the guys on the stand - and being a Linux user (and Eee owner) I got as much technical info as I could.
What they had on the stand was a technical sample and not a final product. They're playing with different processors (including a 1GHz processor) and seeing how much memory they can get in without exceeding £100. The OS they had on there wasn't final either, and they openly admitted to anyone that it's looking a bit flaky at the moment because they'd committed to a launch date and then had to rush things last minute.
The device itself is novel in design and I rather liked it - seeing through the rough edges it was obvious to me that there was something good inside, and I just hope that the rough edges are polished off nicely. The keyboard was a bit squishy for my liking but then I touchtype, and this is being marketed for kids - when I was a kid, I had a rubber-keyed Spectrum that I pecked the keys of. The display, however, is as good as the Eee (which is good).
I'd lay down £100 for one. Nuff said.
Looks like I won't get my EEE till June anyway!
I'm tempted to fork out my tenner for the Elonex EEEclone. I ordered an EEE from Clove nearly a month ago and not only has it not arrived, but they never reply to my emails asking what's happening.
You have try them both
Its like buying a car, you need to get inside them both and drive them for a bit for see what they are like.
Me, well I like the Elonex girl somewhat - whan to see her with her kit off - as for the other one - if PhotoShop is involved, she might be 80 years, toothless and a midget !!!!!
And the Laptop/PDA/Mobile phone thingy - for £99 its going to be crap - 300Mhz CPU (or whatever its got tucked away inside) If you tried XP on that, never mind Vista, well I supose, Windows starting in about 5 hours time would be different - oh bugger the battery only lasts 4 hours...............
The specs are a joke.
12" screen?!
"instead of having a 7" screen for £100, why not have a 12" screen for £150? Or at least have it as an optional extra."
An optional extra? And how exactly would you fit a 12" screen in instead of a 7" one? Engage your brain before you type next time.
