The Technicist

This week in Subnotebooks

Another relatively eventful week in subnotebooks, this week was. Another delay, another release, and another review (albeit with a twist) - all pretty interesting and important subjects.

1. We start with a piece done by everybody's favorite subnotebook reviewer, Joanna Stern of Laptop Magazine. She is usually the first to review the latest netbook devices, privileged as she is, and does an excellent job of it. This time, she has done a head to head comparison of the EEE 1000H and the MSI Wind, not too different from what I was suggesting not too long ago. Her shootout is similar in style and layout to the old Cnet Prizefights (before Cnet made them video reviews and completely cheesy), with a short description of the pros and cons of each subnotebook in the respective category, then declaring a winner for each catagory, with the overall winner being decided by the number of catagories won. In this case, there were 4 categories, and with the two were quite closely matched in these 4, the deciding factor was the price of the device. Who won? The answer, my friends, lies in the air (no, not THAT Air). Personally speaking, I think this comparo needs to be rerun with the Acer Aspire One, featuring an LED backlit 8.0" screen, Atom,  and an 80GB hard drive, as another contender. The Atom+HDD combo units is quite possibly the most useful class of devices in the subnotebook space, and I think it needs to be explored more thoroughly.

2. Next we move on to some news out of Taiwan, or more specifically, from Micro-Star International. This week, MSI has announced yet ANOTHER delay to the Wind, this time to July 7th. Why? Batteries again. You think they'd just switch to a different battery supplier to get around this - people have waited long enough for their devices, guys. At the very least, ship them out with 3 cell batteries and give people a small rebate or something for their troubles. Interestingly, a Medion rebrand of the Wind is shipping out on July 3rd. Could that be another source for delay, and will MSI be shipping out the Wind on the 7th as promised? We shall wait a week and see.

3. This just in: Asus is replacing its EEE 900 and 901 models with the new 903, 904, and 905. What are these, you may ask? The 903 (right) looks exactly like the old 900, and is accordingly just the 901 hardware in the 900 chassis, while the 904/905 (above) is the 901 hardware packaged in the 1000's casing, with the same 8.9" screen being used on both models. Bring baaaaack the days of the 1" bezel! Uhh, no, not really. Asus, hello, is anyone there? We don't want bigger laptops with big ugly bezels, thanks. If you're going to make your netbooks bigger, at the very least make sure that they don't have the same screen size and thus screw consumers over in multiple ways at once (confusion over each model, added size/weight, and more uglieness...) Please, its the very least you could do. Yes, the keyboard is bigger, but by how much? .5 mm a key? 1 mm? I used the 900's keyboard, and it was perfectly acceptable for a unit so small (unlike the 701, which was simply too small to be useful at all). Upping it to the 10" chassis is simply not an intelligent move on the part of Asus. Even worse with the bezels is that on both models, they are using a black bezel, which means the white EEE (left) once again resembles a laptop with a panda being used for design inspiration. They never learn, I tell you.

While nobody knows the exact difference between the 904 and 905, I think the 904 will be a Linux model and the 905 will be a Windows model. I cannot say this for sure, but logically that is a very probable explanation for the model number difference. However, it could also signify a form of built-in WWAN (3G, EVDO, WiMax) being made available for the EEE line. We will likely find out when Asus sees fit to grace us with official details. Pricing will stay approximately the same as before, with the 903 coming in at the $549 price point as the 900, and the 904/905 hitting the $599 MSRP of the 901.

 

Reanalyzing the Subnotebook Segment

Since I last looked at the subnotebook market segment in a piece for JK On the Run about a month ago, much has changed, with the major player adding a new product, its main rival delaying theirs, and two giants in mainstream computers announcing their competing devices in hopes of benefiting from the media thunder that the segment generates. (There are many names for this class of device, with subnotebook and netbook being the most prominent among them, hence I will refer to them as either subnotebooks or netbooks in the future.)

Asus took the time at Computex in Taiwan to unveil the EEE 901, essentially just the 900 with Intel's new 45nm Atom processors and a slight visual upgrade, and also the new EEE 1000 and 1000H. The 1000 and 1000H both feature a 10" WSVGA screen, a larger keyboard to go along with the larger footprint, more polished casing featuring a glossy finish, the requisite Atom processors, and, in the case of the 1000H, a mechanical 2.5" SATA hard drive. This is a pretty big step from the EEE norm, which has up to this point has had only flash based SSDs, which severely limited capacity but allowed for better battery life, lighter weight, and the benefit of having no moving parts within the computer. So then why did Asus add a hard drive option? Because some users cannot live on 4 or 8 gigabytes of hard drive space, and most of the competiton was offering hard drives as either standard or optional. Chiefly, the EEE's crosstown rival, MSI's $399 Wind. Another big jump for the EEE PC line? The $649 sum that the 1000H commands.

Having pretty much championed the Wind in my previous column, I must take this time to say that Asus has now technically matched it pretty much point for point. However, while the 1000H is priced at $649, an identically specced Wind with the same 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD and XP costs a mere $479, and the lower end model with Linux and 512MB memory is only $399. Interestingly, earlier this week, the Wind was delayed again, this time to June 27th, which is the coming Friday. According to msiwind.net, this is due to a shortage in the 6 cell batteries, so the first release series will come with 3 cell batteries, but afterwards, the XP model will be sold with a 6 cell battery for $499.

A third Taiwanese company is jumping into contention, this time Acer with its sharp-looking Aspire One. The Aspire One features an 8.9" WSVGA screen (with an LED backlight, which is pretty amazing in this market), Atom processors, an 8GB SSD or 80GB HDD, and your choice of Linux or XP, all for a $379 base price. Its pretty safe to assume that with XP and the 80GB hard drive, the price would likely rise to a still=competitive $500 or so. In terms of looks, it almost appears as though Acer has been studying the design of the HP 2133 Mini-Note, as the One features a similar style touchpad (buttons on either side of the mouse) and a glossy bezel. It will be offered in white and blue initially, with gold and pink to become options later on.

Dell's new Insprion E netbook has also been leaked, and most of its details are now known. While both the 1000H and the One were pitched as direct competition to the Wind, Dell has gone for a different route. The E aims squarely for the EEE 901, and directly hits it, with a 8.9" WSVGA screen, 1.6GHz Atom processor, 4/8/12GB SSD (no hard drive option), and your choice of Linux or Windows - identical in pretty much every way to the 901. However, where the Dell soundly beats the Asus is again, price. The 901 rings in at $599 with either OS (presumably, the XP model has less flash memory, similar to how the setup is on the current EEE 900), while the E starts at $299 and likely ends up at around $400-450 comparably equipped to the 901 models. Another benefit for the E? Its customizable like every other Dell model, and features a number of colour options as well. At this point, I must bemoan the lack of creativity of Dell's marketing division, or whoever the idiot was who named this thing the 'E'. Even the rumoured Inspiron Mini name was better than 'E' - this is just a cheap ploy to gain some from the EEE's name recognition. I expected better from Dell, really.

Coming back to the 'E' itself, there is a second E model called the E Slim. It features a 12.1" WXGA screen, is .8" thick, has 1.3 and 1.6GHz Silverthorne processors, a 1.8" hard drive, and the standard choice of Linux or XP. It is aiming at where the MacBook Air should have been - a usable ultraportable at a sub $1000 price point. The E Slim is even nearly as thin as the Air. Who wants to bet that within 3 days of release, someone will have Leopard loaded onto this thing and have pasted an Apple sticker over the Dell logo on the back? Seriously, I'm almost willing to put money on it.

Anyways, it looks as though the subnotebook space is really starting to heat up with the latest flurry of announcements. Later in summer, when all of these notebooks start shipping, I am planning to pick up one of each and run a subnotebook showdown in Seattle to see which subnotebook reigns supreme. Added incentive: I will keep the best one of the lot, since I really want a uber-portable notebook. I'm even planning on selling off my beloved W7S for one of these; thats how badly I want one. Apparently, considering all the media attention these diminutive darlings are recieving, I'm not the only one.