Another player on the mini laptop market

An add in a local newspaper pointed me at the Acer Aspire One. It is yet another mini notebook. With a weight of under a kilo and 8,9 inch screen it seems quite a nice product. I found a review at cnet. It certainly is a nice price at 299 euros, shame about the trackpad buttons and the weak battery.
I am still happy with my Asus Eee, but the 7 inch screen is still rather small and I am disappointed with the updates Asus has provided for the Xandros operating system. I do hope Acer will do a better job with the Linus Lite OS they are using on the Aspire One. It is interesting that the hardware manufacturers are the ones responsible for supporting open Source operating systems...

Asus Mini notebook: an interesting inbetween

I am a very loyal user of a Palm TX, but it is simply to small for writing and browsing. On the other hand, lugging a notebook about is a pain (for my right shoulder mainly). So I was fascinated to see that Asus is working hard on the Eee notebook. What makes it interesting for me:
- Very portable
- Cheap
- Does the basics when I am on the move (reading and writing emails, checking feeds, writing blog, writing out matters)

Of course it is not a full blown PC. I was interested to see they are planning to drop it in the educational market. If you see what we expect our students to do, it may well be too limited (statistical analysis is one thing it will not (yet) do. On the other hand: if you see what our students want to do it is probably quite suitable: to be connected and share at all times through messenger or videocall through skype, type out basic reports, browse and watch Youtube and connect with iPod.
I think I am going to give it a try when it comes out here in The Netherlands. Many vids ar already available at Youtube. Here's one to give you an idea.