Netbook Wars

In November of last year Asus released a mini laptop called the Eee PC. A 7 inch screen, simple insides, running on Linux, this machine was built for web browsing, photo uploading, open office documents, FireFox, iGoogle, Wikipedia etc. A main stream open source machine. Within a month the Eee PC sold hundreds of thousands of units. It became a huge hit amongst children and adults all over the world. With it's popularity comes competition. HP has released the Mini Note, Acer has the Aspire One, MSI the Wind. Today is Computex where all of these companies are releasing the specs on their, as they have grown to be called, Netbooks. Will Asus still dominate the market or will MSI take over. Are prices going to start dropping with the competition, what extra features will each pack in to win, all of this and more will be covered all day!

9:31
The Asus 901 and 1000 have been officially announced

9:32
MSI Wind gets 4.5 out of 5

10:14
Acer Aspire One priced at $379, $20 cheaper than the MSI Wind and nearly $300 cheaper than the Asus 901. Come on Asus you started this war, end it with the sub $300 Netbook you promised! The 1000 better be less than $500 to compete with Acer and MSI.

10:53
Asus 1000 and 1000H announced, the H being a traditional hard drive based machine instead of SSD. Priced at appox. $630. Seems a bit much to me since the MSI Wind has the same if not better specs and is only $400.

11:02
Via and Gigabyte announce Netbooks

11:16
MSI Wind XP Version will be released June 16th, however the Linux version won't come out till later this summer. Acer's Aspire One will be shipped Q3 2008.

11:20
New Ubuntu GUI released specifically for Netbooks

11:39
Gigabytes Netbook will be convertible tablet form. Mmmm Tablet. Just wish the battery wasn't so weak, and still waiting on a price.

12:17
Eee 1000 Vs 901 Vs 700


Next Day
Asus 901 is easiest to mod Netbook yet. After a full day of reviewing and comparing Netbooks, I think I'm going to stick with the one and only the Asus Eee. I've wanted one for months now but with the price of competitors being much less had considered getting a Wind. However I want to have it by next week and the Wind won't be coming out till end of summer, so alas I will spend the extra $150 on the Asus Eee 901.