EEE PC News - Cheaper Windows XP for subnotebooks

According to the German c´t magazine, Microsoft is going to release cheap versions of Windows XP for subnotebooks. The licence will be applicable only to laptops with a max display of 10,2-inch and no more than 80GB hard disk. A licence should cost about $20.
This will definetly help to keep the subnotebook price down...

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EEE PC Competition - One A120 and A110 - Cheap EEE PC 4G alternative?

In the past couple of months several laptop brands announced subnotebook alternatives to EEE PC . One announced the models A120 and A110. The One A120 is very similar to the EEE PC 4G, marketed in Germany at 279 Euro and equipped with a VIA C7 1GHz processor, 512MB DDR2, 4GB SDD, WLAN, 7-inch display, webcam and especially Windows XP home.
The A110 uses Linux and is priced at 229 Euro, misses a webcam and has only a 2GB SDD.

I've already posted a few articles about subnotebooks / ultra portable pcs in direct competition to EEE PC, see also

• HP Compaq Mininote 2
• HP Compaq Mininote 1
• MSI Wind 3
• MSI Wind 2
• MSI Wind 1 - Atom CPU vs Celeron
• Gigabyte M912
• MSI Wind, EasyNote, Elox One, OLPC and Dell Vostro

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EEE PC Competition - MSI Wind pre-order availability

I announced not long ago the possibility to pre-order the ultra portable laptop MSI Wind at expansys.
Mistery: the MSI Wind disappeared from the website, the expansys guys probably got too many pre-orders for the subnotebook...

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EEE PC News - EEE PC 901 (Atom based) for Sale

According to several sources, the EEE PC 901 will be launched on June 3rd. The ultra portable laptop will cost below $650 (NT $20000), however it isn't clear how much "below".
To be honest the biggest news that I was awaiting for was a cost reduction: the original idea behind EEE PC was to build a low cost ultra portable laptop , competing with the $100 shool PC initiatives. Now we got to $650 and a this price level the EEE PC 901 is competing with (much more powerful, not so portable though) entry level laptops. Furthermore Asus should watch out ultra portable competition: the MSI Wind is priced starting from $399 with comparable feature set...

Back to the original news, some features for the EEE PC 901

• Intel Atom CPU
• Bluetooth
• 8.9-inch display
  
• Cosmetic changes, making the look a little bit more "metallic"

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Buy Laptop in USA from Europe or Asia - Parcel Forwarding Service

I've just learned that there are some US based parcel porwarding service: you buy online goods in USA and give them their address, the parcel forwarding company will forward you the goods worldwide.
Be careful: they can be very expensive, of course you pay the parcel forwarding service! It can be as high as $200 for a laptop!

I found so far the following companies and I personally have no experience with them, so no guarrantee ;-)

• yankit.de
• shopusa.com
• bongous.com

If you have more details please let me know!

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EEE PC Competition - next HP Compaq MiniNote with Intel Atom or VIA Isaiah (C8-M)?

It seems that for the next MiniNote, HP Compaq is picking the CPU between Intel Atom and the new VIA Isaiah (C8-M).
Actually I'd be surprised if HP Compaq changes platform and use Intel, this would be a major change from current HP Compaq MiniNote 2133 with VIA C7-M.
The VIA C8-M Isaiah should be significantly more faster than the C7-M, especially because of much bigger caches.
According to first rumors the C8-M should be able to decode blue-ray films without problems. I'll let you know more in next posts.
About Isaiah vs Atom: You can find around a lot of posts about a CrystalMark benchmark where the Isaiah performs better than the Atom. Actually I have some doubths about test methodology, for this reason I'll wait for serious benchmarks on real products to come.

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EEE PC Competition - HP Compaq MiniNote 2133 for sale!

Yet another competitor for the EEE PC and MSI Wind: the subnotebook HP Compaq MiniNote 2133.

To be noted that all of them are based on VIA C7-M CPU at different clock (1.0, 1.2 and 1.6). 8.9-inch display and especially 4 USB 2.0 ports and one ExpressCard/54 slot (to be checked).

HP MiniNote 2133 KX872AA / FF009AA, between $600 and $750

• CPU VIA C7-M 1.2GHz
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM and Linux for KX872AA, 2GB SDRAM and Windows Vista Business for FF009AA
• 120GB hard disk
  
• 8.9-inch display, resolution
• Bluetooth, Wifi
• 4xUSB
  
• ExpressCard/54
• 3-cell battery (KX872AA) or 6-cell battery (FF009AA)
  

HP MiniNote 2133 KR922UT for about $500

• CPU VIA C7-M 1.0GHz
  
• 512MB DDR2 SDRAM
• Linux
• 4GB hard disk
  
• 8.9-inch display, resolution
• Wifi
• Not sure about 4 USB 2.0 and one ExpressCard/54
• 3-cell battery

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EEE PC News - BIOS Upgrade for EEE PC 900

A BIOS upgrade (0501) is available for the EEE PC 900. The official description is "Updated panel PWM frequency": this is probably referring to a fix to the "screen whine" problem.
The major news are

• It is not possible to manually configure the CPU clock (630MHz and 900MHz) the lower frequency is automatically set to 630MHz in battery mode.
• Increase in the display brightness
• Fix the screen whine problem

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EEE PC News - Benchmark comparing Atom (Diamondville) vs Celeron vs Core 2 Duo

The Japanese site Impress (pc.watch.impress.co.jp) published PCMark 05 benchmark results comparing a MSI Wind desktop (not to be confused with the MSI Wind ultra portable laptop).
So you may say, what's the matter? The benchmark is of interest since the MSI Wind desktop is equipped with an Atom (Diamondville) CPU clocked at 1.33GHz, chipset Intel 945GC Express, 1GB SDRAM, Windows Vista.
The other tested devices

• Asus EEE PC 900: Celeron M 900MHz, 1GB SDRAM and Windows XP
• Asus EEE PC 701 4G: Celeron M 630MHz, 512MB SDRAM and Windows XP
• Sony Vaio T VGN TZ905: Core 2 Duo U7600 (1.2GHz), 2GB SDRAM and Windows XP

Before giving the results: also in this case I have some (little) doubths about the test methodology! It is important to compare apple with apples! Nevertheless I must say that the result of this benchmark is far more applicable to the Atoms SuperPI benchmark and the CrystalMark benchmarks agains VIA Isaiah (C8) other published in the past weeks.

There were two major differences between the Atom system (MSI Wind desktop) and the other systems

1. Operating system: the Atom and Core 2 Duo systems were running Windows Vista while the EEE PCs run Windows XP. Vista slows down dramatically PC performance. This is especially true for systems with little memory and for slower CPUs, as typical for ultra portable laptops and tiny desktops.
   
2. PC type: Impress compared the three listed ultra portable laptops with a tiny desktop. This is also not optimal, since tiny desktops and ultra portable laptops are built using different parts and requirements.

That said, here you have some of the results.
Compared to the Celeron system, the Atom system scores well on the system tests while in the CPU benchmark the Atom numbers look very bad.
It seems confirmed that Intel Atom is not suitable for CPU intensive tasks, BUT WHO CARES????
Atom's best feature is the very low power consumption, Atom targets cheap ultra portable laptops and desktops, mainly used for surfing and casual Office. If you need performance you should buy a Core 2 Duo and add 1000 bucks by the way... ;-)

PCMark05 (syntetic index of the overall system performance)

• 2328 Core 2 Duo 1,2GHz
• 1468 Atom 1,33GHz
• 1126 Celeron 900MHz
• 818 Celeron 630MHz

CPU Score (use very CPU intensive algorithms: file comp/decompression, en/decryption, image and audio comp/decompression)

• 2328 Core 2 Duo 1,2GHz
• 1441 Celeron 900MHz
• 1159 Atom 1,33GHz
• 997 Celeron 630MHz

The good PCMark05 value can be explained to the relatively high HDD score (4x higher than the EEE PC 900, 2x higher than the Vaio) and the good memory score (slightly below the Vaio and higher than both EEE PCs).
About the CPU score: I think that here we can see that the Atom was designed with power in mind, not for CPU intensive task. We can see this especially with the major difference between the Atom and Core 2 Duo result. The latter scores well, given the dual core and the performant CPU architecture. Also the Celeron CPU is much more complex than the Atom and we see the results in the CPU benchmark.

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EEE PC Competition - Details on MSI Wind

I already gave initial details about the MSI Wind: 1,6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB RAM (on board), 80GB 2.5 inch hard disk and a webcam (1.3 megapixel), 8.9 or 10 inch display with LED backlighting.
got additional information: the MSI Wind integrated Bluetooth and a 3-cell battery.

The chipset should be Intel 945GMS with ICH7-M. This is an interesting news, in fact this chipset supports 533 MHz front-side bus while the EEE PC chipset (Intel 910GML chipset) supports only 400 MHz front-side bus.
The higher frequency can result in higher performance, especially due to the bigger DDR2 throughput.

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EEE PC News - EEE PC 20G and 12G Pre-Orders

It is possible to pre-order the EEE PC 20G and 12G at Amazon.com in US, availability early June.
They are from the EEE PC 900 series, equipped with 8.9 inch screen (1024x600), 900 MHz CPU, 1GB RAM and 20GB hard disk (SDD, Solid State Drive) .
The only difference is the operating system: Linux for the 20G and Windows-XP for the 12G.

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EEE PC - CPU for 700, 701 and 900

There is a lot of confusion about the EEE PC CPU, especially about CPU clock and cache size.
All models released so far use an Intel Celeron-M ULV (Ultra Low Voltage), model 353.

CPU Cache (from the Celeron M 353 datasheet) :

• 32KB L1 instruction + 32KB L1 data cache (write back)
  
• 512KB L2 cache

CPU frequency

• EEE PC 700 (2G) : 571 MHz (from original 800 MHz)
• EEE PC 701 (4G, 8G) : 630 MHz (from original 900 MHz)
• EEE PC 900 : the original 900 MHz

Front Side Bus: 400 MHz (original...)

It is possible (and you void the guarrantee!) to overclocking the CPU and/or replace the CPU with a Pentium-M ULV.

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EEE PC vs MSI Wind - Atom vs Celeron CPU Performance Benchmark

A German site (Computerbase) run the SuperPI benchmark on a Asus R70A UMPC equipped with the Atom 1,6 GHz (Silverthorne), the new Intel CPU targeting MID, UMPC and ultra portable devices.
The same processor is going to be equipped in the MSI Wind and in new EEE PCs and Gigabyte M912.

At a first glance the result seems a bit disappointing for a new CPU: the 1,6 GHz Atom CPU seems slower than the 900 MHz Celeron CPU found in EEE PC 900 and much slower than the 1,73 GHz Pentium M 740.
Number talks you may say: just considering the lower end

• 1,13 GHz Pentium III-M (Tualatin) 01:55 minutes (worse)
  
• 1,6 GHz Atom (Silverthorne) 01:48 minutes
• 900 MHz Celeron (Dothan-512) 01:28 minutes
• 1,73 GHz Pentium M 740 (Dothan) 00:46 minutes

However the Intel Atom has a bigger potential, not shown from this benchmark!
Some facts

1. The german guys compared a pre-production product (with Atom processor) against mature products! We all know that pre-production products are often not very optimized and this is probably the case. Furthermore, the benchmark run on a UMPC: these kind of products are optimized for battery, not for performance.
2. SuperPI does a lot of number crunching, this is not Atom's target application! Atom is optimized for ultra portable applications, it means for low power. I simply ignore these kind of benchmarks: they say very little to the real-life performance.
3. Intel Atom supports hyperthreading: as far as I know SuperPI doesn't take avantage of it. This technology can improve real life applications from 10%-30%. The tested Celeron and Pentium M don't. have this potential.
4. Intel Atom's relatively small L2 cache (only 512KB) may be accounted for the bad results especially if compared to the Pentium M (2048KB)

I think that in the next few months we'll see much more tests and better results product based on Intel's Atom

See also how to replace CPU on EEE PC

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EEE PC Competition : MSI Wind for Sale!

It is possible to buy (pre-order) the MSI Wind at expansys in a number of colours with 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB SDRAM, 80GB hard disk, integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam and Windows XP home. It will be available with 8.9 and 10 inch displays (LED backlighting). A few colours are available.

the 10 inch version is priced today (May 10th 2008) for about

• $ 610 in US
• Euro 425 in Germany,
• Euro 465 in Italy and France
• Pounds 350 in UK

To be noted that expansys ships worldwide (just change country: look for "change" top-right of the site)
As far as I know the MSI Wind should be shipped end of June this year, however you'd better contact expansys for an exact date!

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EEE PC Mods - Integrated GPS, Bluetooth, 802.11n, touch screen ...

Your EEE PC is a very tiny laptop with a big upgrade potential: you can integrate a GPS receiver (including antenna!), Wireless N (802.11n), Bluetooth, additional storage, and much more!
For most of these some hardware mods are requrired: the devices are connected to internal USB ports obtained adding a tiny USB hub inside the laptop case (see also in the EEE PC links post)

Don't forget that hardware modification are at your own risk: you void the guarrantee.
An alternative that I recommend is to add the GPS and Bluetooth functionality via the available USB ports! There are a lot of GPS and Bluetooth USB dongles out on the market, some of them with Linux support. About storage, just attach an USB hard disk.
In a next post I'll list of EEE PC compatible GPS and Bluetooth USB dongles. Stay tuned!

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EEE PC Competition: about EEE PC 701 and 900, MSI Wind, EasyNote XS, Elox One, Dell Vostro 1400 and OLPC XO-1

CNET is one of the premium source for electronics review, I post quick links to CNET's reviews of EEE PC 701 and 900 as well as some of the most interesting competitors

• Asus EEE PC 701 and 900 of course, this is our benchmark! You can also read a full review of the EEE PC 701 and full review of EEE PC 900
• Packard Bell EasyNote XS. here you also find the full review of the EasyNote XS . This one is pretty expensive, to be noted that the Packard Bell engineers managed to fit a 30GB hard disk in that little form factor.
• MSI Wind this must be watched out, it is definetly a serious competitor, it is very similar to the EEE PC, the plus here is a bigger 2.5 inch hard disk and a very aggressive price. More details on MSI Wind from CNET
  

Actually this is not real competition for the EEE PC, nevertheless it is worth listing what you can get for less than 400 dollars. Some of them designed for shool childrens and with very little horse power.

• Elonex One, also called GeCube Genie
• One Laptop Per Child, the famous "100 dollars laptop". See also full review for the OLPC XO-1

Just for completeness CNET compares to the Dell Vostro 1400, much bigger than an EEE PC however with similar pricing, nothing impressive you may say. Well it is indeed: in the price a 120GB hard disk and a DVD burner are included!!! CNET previouw of the Dell Vostro 1400

All links from CNET.co.uk

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