Everex Jumps Into The UMPC Market
Everex, the Taiwanese PC maker that sells a $199 Linux PC through Wal-Mart, is showing a $399 <a href="http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=Ultra%2DMobilePC" target="_blank">ultra-mobile PC</a>, the CloudBook, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The tiny notebook is intended to compete with the <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/12/bib_memory_for.html" target="_blank">Asus Eee PC</a>.
Everex, the Taiwanese PC maker that sells a $199 Linux PC through Wal-Mart, is showing a $399 ultra-mobile PC, the CloudBook, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The tiny notebook is intended to compete with the Asus Eee PC.The CloudBook uses a VIA processor and chipset, and its design closely follows VIA's reference design for a UMPC that it called the VIA NanoBook Ultra Mobile Device (UMD). Another version of the design was expected in Britain from Packard Bell at the end of 2007.
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The CloudBook runs the gOS Rocket Linux OS on VIA's 1.2-GHz C7-M processor, with 512 Mbytes of DDR2, 533-MHz RAM, a 30-Gbyte hard drive, a 7-inch WVGA display (800 x 480), built-in 802.11b/g WLAN, and 10/100 Ethernet. It weighs just under 2 pounds, and comes preloaded with applications from Google, Mozilla, Skype, OpenOffice.org, and others. It is expected to be available from Wal-Mart for $399 beginning Jan. 25.
The CloudBook has many similarities to the Asus Eee PC -- they apparently both use the same slightly compressed keyboard, for example -- but the 30 Gbyte hard drive is a major difference. The Asus computer comes in 4-Gbyte and 8-Gbyte flash memory-based versions.
Everex apparently sees a market opportunity in inexpensive PCs and laptops loaded with Linux: in addition to its Wal-Mart products it supplies the laptop hardware marketed by Zonbu, a company that sells managed hardware on a low-price-plus-subscription model.
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