Mini Notebooks..

[Grommit]

Hi

Which is the best one of these ? Stone or RM and are there others out there ?

[torledo]

Hi

Which is the best one of these ? Stone or RM and are there others out there ?

The stone appears in various guises including the packard bell easynote xs - and i must admit i am eager to have a play with one.

Trouble is, i fear it's a bit of a turkey as a complete package.

There were some promising candidates in the umpc market, such as the oqo2 - trouble is they run windows on a slow coach ultra-mobile processor, keyboard input is awkward, and price is horrendous...

The umpc market could well be a dead man walking...becuase from one end the internet tablets such as the N80 are beating up on umpc's from the price/portability angle, and the eee is beating up on the umpc from the price/performance angle. Granted, the N80 isn't a general purpose computer and you can't fit the eee in the palm of you're hand - but i don't think i want to use a full blown OS on devices that are really just overweight PDA's with keyboards...particulrly at the heavyweight prices of the Q1 and OQO...

Sorry, in answer to you're question.....the eee/minibook is the best imo - for the time being.

[webman]

Stone: Based on VIA chip running at 1.2GHz and is a little cooler than the ASUS EeePC. Has a huge gaping hole between body and screen - some find this off-putting. Has a touch-screen. Unless you hold it with your other hand, the pressure might push the screen backwards (just a guess). It also comes with XP so miles more expensive than the open-source-powered EeePC. Also requirements for antivirus and firewall and antispyware will leave less resources for what you really want to run.

EeePC: Good basic ultra portable laptop at a decent price (thanks to lack of Microsoft tax). Good expansion capabilities. Runs Linux so no requirement for antivirus/antispyware.

[Ric_]

@Grommit: It depends on your intended use... I have a Nokia N800 (£130 from Play.com!) because I wanted a device for accessing web-based content but with the geek factor of Linux still.

[plexer]

N800 currently 169.99 from play you save £130 on it.

Ben

[markcuk]

i vote for the asus eee.

this is a good site to get more info http://www.eeeuser.com/

mark

[webman]

The OQOs look cool but it's a shame they don't ship without Windows too

[torledo]

The OQOs look cool but it's a shame they don't ship without Windows too

I think if they shipped a tweaked version of a linux distro with the oqo it would do wonders for the performance.

[webman]

I totally agree Torledo - perhaps Ubuntu running customised Enlightenment such as with gOS?

[torledo]

I totally agree Torledo - perhaps Ubuntu running customised Enlightenment such as with gOS?

Now that's an interesting one, i really like the look of gOS but from what i've read it's absolute garbage. Don't know why - one of those things where reasons for dislike aren't forthcoming. Do you have any experience of using gOS on an ultraportable ?

[webman]

Not on an ultraportable, but I've used it on a laptop for a short while. I haven't used Enlightenment extensively and I'm biased towards KDE because it's what I'm used to. But I think what makes gOS unlikable for some is it's Firefox-for-everything idea that's going on and that the interface doesn't include the standard menu, taskbar and system tray in the usual place. The left-aligned window buttons was also off-putting for me.

[Geoff]

Wouldn't Damn Small Linux be sufficient?

[tosca925]

i am currently testing one of these. I have the white Asus Eee-PC 4gb model. I have installed XP Pro SP2 and followed the guidlines to cut remove certain un-needed windows files. I have done a windows update to bring it up to date and then removed the files that are kept. I have install SiMS and Office 2003. I am really impressed with it. We are going to trial these with PE staff instead of PDA's.

Later today i will be installing Sophos and I'm sure this will give it a full test.

[Domino]

We've got one of the first model oQO's here.

to be fair, if you're not doing anything too intensive (and on a UMPC, who'd want to?), then its a really good little device.

solidly built, runs fast and reliably, batteries good, even with xp.

however they're damn expensive

[Grommit]

Ok.. We are buying one of each to test them out... one ASUS and one Stone..... :-)