Small, Cheap Computer countdown continues
All arriving late July?
Punters looking to buy a Small, Cheap Computer are having to play a waiting game. Almost all of the most well known models won't appear until the end of the month.
It's a story of slipping releases for many of the vendors concerned. A case in point: Acer's Aspire One was, when the machine was announced, scheduled for a late June/early July release. Our survey of retailers shows it's not now expected until 25 July.
Asus, the company that started the SCC craze, said its Atom-powered Eee PC 901 would be available to buy on 1 July. That date's passed, and there's a marked lack of resellers who can say when they'll have some in, let alone offering them for sale.
That said the 10in, 80GB HDD-equipped Eee PC 1000H has apparently gone on sale, though very few suppliers are listing it. Clove.co.uk has it in stock when we checked.
PCWorld should puts its Advent-branded MSI Wind on sale today if it makes good on the pledge it made last week. The retailer claims this is the "World's first Intel Atom Netbook", though it wasn't the first to be announced or,if you consider the 10in Eee 1000H to be a netbook - it's a little large for the category, perhaps - to ship.
At the end of July, we should see the arrival of the Aspire One, closely followed by MSI's own-brand version of the Wind.
Beyond that, Asus' Eee 904 - a 900 in a 1000H chassis - and ECS' HSPDA-enabled G10IL have, as yet, no known release dates, though the ECS machine is expected in September. Asus' SSD-equipped Eee 1001 will be here late August, we were told.
Asus Eee PC 901
Due: 1 July 2008 Now due "late July"
Lowest Price: £350
Asus Eee PC 1000H
Due: On Sale
Lowest Price: £349
Asus Eee PC 1001
Due: "Expected late August"
Lowest Price: £379
PCWorld Advent 4211
(aka MSI Wind)
Due: 8 July 2008
Lowest Price: £280
Acer Aspire One
Due: 25 July 2008
Lowest Price: £230
MSI Wind
Due: 31 July 2008
Lowest Price: £330
Elonex One
Due: September
Lowest Price: £99
Asus Eee PC 904
Due: TBA
Lowest Price: TBA
Gigabyte M912
Due: TBA
Lowest Price: TBA
ECS G10IL
Due: TBA
Lowest Price: £464
Nb. listed prices are those of the lowest-specced version of each machine, not the lowest on offer at publication time.
COMMENTS
Elonex One
I pre-ordered mine (what the hell, it's only a hundred quid) in March. Had an email today, requesting final payment for dispatch within 28 days. However, they have also offered me a free upgrade to the Elonex Onet+, which will allegedly sell for £199. With a further application of the "what the hell" principle I have done so.
The specs on line are not very detailed: same 800x480 as everyone else, 2GB storage, no mention of OS or software thought it's "compatible with MS Office" so I presume some form of Linux.
Now that I've ordered the Onet+ I can't see any mention of it on their website, so I suspect that either they are having One supply problems and punting out something which isn't officially launched yet to fill the gap or - more likely - that I'm about to be an unwitting beta tester.
But what the hell.
PS ElReg folk, contact me f you want the Onet+ to review.
Advent 4211 @ Currys
The Advent 4211 is available from Currys online. I ordered mine on Thursday last week and it arrived yesterday morning.
head on over to www.currys.co.uk and search for advent 4211 :)
Belco Alpha-400?
At US$249 over at http://www.bestlinkeshop.com is available now, and has been available for a while...
(I've had mine for nearly 2 weeks now)
Cheaper than the rest, weighs only 700grams, and is slightly smaller than the Eee 701.
Of course, the Linux distro has been hacked and slashed beyond recognicion and is 'rather' limited...
(They manaed to fit Linux, AbiWord, Gnumeric, FireFox 2.0, a PDFviewer, multimediaplayer and even an IceAge II Preview into 350MB... )
Here is a small cheap computer system....
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=170235859239&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=007
Booting Vista
"Well I would argue that you can get a great laptop for ~$500, for starters most skimp on RAM (and 1 MB with Vista is painful)."
Too right: you won't even BOOT with 1MB.
The prices are FAR too high. OLPC is still around 160 euros or £120. +50% on that because OLPC is non-profit-making and your low cost PC should be ~£200 mark with PLENTY profit.
More likely it's just they are able to ream us, so they will.
