Amazon selling OLPCs

I missed this ... have been really busy recently but I now note that on 16th December Amazon will be releasing One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop. The BBC reported on this on 14th November.

Interestingly the $100 laptop will sell here for £275 ... have I missed something here ?

There is a really wizzy rundown of the guts of the machine here.

New Chinese mini laptop

My Twitter feeds give me details of yet another new mini ... this time the HiVision miniNote Laptop.

This one appears to be selling for $98 which by my conversion by Google: 98 U.S. dollars = 54.9142665 British pounds ... under £55 !!

... another bus is on the way ...

Spotted (on purpose perhaps) at Computex 2008 was the GIGABYTE M912. Yet another 'small' laptop ... with a 8.9" convertable touchscreen packing an Atom processor.

Endgadget says:

Carving out the newest niche in the low cost, mini-laptop, ultra-portable, *gasp* netbook category is the Gigabyte M912. As a convertible, touch-screen mini-tablet, the M912 runs Vista or Ubuntu Linux atop Intel's Atom processor. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be hampered by a 4-cell battery showing just over 1.5 hours of battery left on a 95% charge. The 7-inch M724 apparently shares the same chassis as the M912 but is meant for classrooms-only, not consumers. Uh, right. That was the original market for all these netbook-class machines as we recall.

Just how many more can the world take ?

And ... I only just finished this posting and thought I would have a look on Gismodo to see what is new and LO and BEHOLD ... another bus came round the corner ... this time it is an Acer Aspire One -

Acer has just announced their new 8.9" Aspire One ultraportable laptop. With a starting price of just $379, configurations include an Intel Atom processor, up to 1GB of RAM and either 8GB of flash storage or an 80GB hard drive as well as a choice between Linpus Linux Lite and Windows XP. Nothing here is out of the ordinary for this new class of laptops except its competitive price and that future iterations are planned with 3G data support

Dell Mini Inspiron

It's back to my buses theme ... Gizmodo has just released a report of the latest mini laptop ... a Dell Inspiron ... no price yet, but it does look good...

I wonder if it is a standard pencil ? Pictures below for comparison with my Dell XPS M1210 which people think is small and dinky. The picture at the top (the red one) in the new piece of kit - the one underneath that is my current Dell machine ... check out the pencil size !





So it's wait and see ... again ...

PS

More from the BBC, and I bet there will be much, much more at the Computex show in Taiwan next week

Just like buses ...

I wonder what the collective noun for a lot of mini handheld computers might be? Having put out a Google alert for such things I am beginning to think that there will be no end to the set/group/mash/??

And I managed to miss one ... Following up a lead led me to the Gizmodo site where I discovered:



Innovations for Learning just announced a blue GameBoy-like handheld computer designed for schools. It's got directional buttons, a few face buttons, a 2.5-inch LCD, USB sync, SD card storage, AC/USB charging, and a 3.5-hour battery life. Inside the teachermate is a "complete reading and math curriculum that is aligned with all of the major reading and math programs," which means it can help substitute the learning a K-2 school student already receives.

They're a non-profit company, which means they only charge the cost of manufacturing the device, $50, but the reading and math programs cost $20 per student. The initial rollout will be at 500 Chicago elementary schools.

I am sure now that I have missed others ... imagine Bitesize running on one of these !

Google News Alerts

I use the Google News Alerts to track the things that I am interested in on a short or long term basis. Currently I have a number of tracks out but today the one that caught my eye is the one for the Elonex ONE which I blogged about after the Education Show.

The next kid on the block appear to be the MSI Wind and there are many reports of it in its prototype state:MSI Wind and 'the codename of the first low-cost laptop of multinational Taiwanese' . But prices and spec seem to be going up not down. This will run in at about 299 Euros. PC World are offering reconditioned laptops at £269 (350 Euro) so for 50 extra Euros ...

I will just have to put in a Google Alert for the MSI Wind and see what else pops up.

The screen below is a Voice Thread which allows you to post onto the images your views. You do need to sign up first to be able to do this. The just click on the small images in the bottom right and have your say. A powerful tool.


PS
Here is a link that reveals further kit in the range ... it grows by the day.

PPS
18th March 2008 - George Cole writes a Guardian article about the Asus

PPPS ... or you could read the review of both the Asus and the Elonex ONE from the Sydney Morning Herald

PPPPS ... and so it goes on ... Intel now throw their hat into the ring.