Invasion of the Netbooks: New systems from Asus, Acer, and Sylvania

From left to right: the Asus Eee PC 1000, Eee PC 901, Sylvania g netbook, and Acer Aspire One.

Sure, it's a popular new form factor, but we've been hit by a literal flood of new Netbooks in the past few days.

This tiny laptop tsunami includes the new 10-inch version of the Asus Eee PC, plus a 7-inch system from Sylvania (yes, the lightbulb and microwave company, although it looks like someone just licensed the name), and Acer's 9-inch Aspire One. We're testing all three systems right now, but here's a quick rundown in the meantime.

Asus Eee PC 1000: The 10-inch version of the Eee PC has a few new tricks up its sleeve. We've got the Linux version, which packs in an impressive 40GB SSD hard drive; there's also a Windows XP version with a standard 80GB hard drive. Both have Intel's new power-saving Atom processor. On the downside, prices continue to creep up, and we're seeing this available for $699.

Sylvania g netbook: It's superlight and weighs less than 2 pounds. It's a lot like the original Eee PC, in that it's $399, and it has a 7-inch screen, plus a custom Linux operating system. It has a 30GB standard hard drive (good) and, like the HP 2133 Mini-Note, a 1.2GHz VIA C7 CPU, instead of Intel's Atom or even Celeron M (not so good).

Acer Aspire One: Impressive-looking at first glance, this 9-inch netbook is thinner than the 9-inch Eee PC, and has Intel's Atom CPU and Linux, but only 512MB of RAM and an 8GB SSD hard drive (a 120GB standard hard drive is also available). It'll start at around $379 when it's available, sometime in Q3.

[velcrofog]

Aaarrgh! It's a LITERAL flood of laptops! Not just a lot, not just a really really whole lot, but a LITERAL FLOOD! From whence came this chunky wall of somehow flowing laptops? Was there a dam somewhere with laptops piled 200 yards high, that broke?

If you still have a bunch of those laptops from your literal flood laying about, ruining your carpets and furniture, I'd be happy to help clean up.

[velcrofog]

I guess my original comment, slightly critical, was buried under the literal flood of laptops. It couldn't have been pulled by someone embarrassed by being part of the figurative flood of people misusing the word "literal".

Seriously, though, if people keep using "literal" to mean "figurative, but a lot" then we won't have any word to use when we want to say "literal". Because literal doesn't have any synonyms, that would literally remove a concept from our language. Figuratively speaking, that would suck.

[Papa Chango]

Never let facts get in the way of a story:

The Acer One is out NOW.
Actually, my sister in law bought one from this place about 2 weeks ago when it came out:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3949908&CatId=2814
And the price was $379.
As for the 8G and 512mb ram, my faithful T21 Thinkpad that was close to 10 years old ran the latest Linux (with XCFE desktop which is lighter) w/ a 20G HD, 256mb ram and a 8mb video card so I dont see how these specs are considered slow for a Linux machine.
I run various distros from 64bits computers to P2's. Its con-fi-gu-ra-ble to all kinds of machines and specs.
And jst bought her a 8G SD card at Futureshop for 30 bucks.
I was planning to replace her Linpus Lite OS with the PCLinuxOS that my wife runs but it is a very intuitive and easy to use interface and she decided to stay with it.

As for us, the wife is going to wait for the Dell E Video which is supposd to start at $299 and is rumoured to feature the Ubuntu Remix for netbooks.
You can check out the specs here :
http://www.engadget.com/photos/dell-e-and-e-slim-revealed-taking-on-eee-and-air-in-one-fell-swoop/859933/

As for being a popular new form factor, how can you tell? Listen to podcasts from CNET, REV3, TWIT and the others and you get one message if they even bother talking about UMPC/netbooks: its a fad, who is going to buy it, this will fail, why should we cover it and my favorite: I dont get it and a multitude of similar excuses.

Dell has a good breakdown of the use in their promo which is similar to how we are going to use these;

Smartphones are the 3-5 web experience when you HAVE to have something right away.

Netbooks will be for the 30-60mins surfing, email and finishing work, not worrying about losing/stolen/damaged like the Protege.

Laptops will be for when you are planning to work for a few hours.

But under no circumstance is the wife willing to pay $799 for the HP Mininote like her friend has when we have so many desktops/laptops in the house.

[wayne287]

Where is the MSI Wind? It seems to be the best deal going for now.

[Dan_Ackerman]

I like the Wind -- I just didn't have it handy that day. Look for a more-detailed shootout between all of these once we're done with the Sylvania and Acer reviews.

[Fernyyy]

Really looking forward to a review/comparison of these systems. I'm thinking of getting a couple of these for the kids for homework on the go and mobile net access other than their phones. Also, I'm thinking something like this for just the basics would be a nice change from the postage stamp display on my phone and yet keep me from having to lug 7+ pounds of a 13" - 15" laptop around.