$299 Dell Inspiron Mini laptop due out in August ...

[eodtech]

$299 Dell laptop
...

[Whoey]

I read about these... I very nearly bought an Acer Aspire One this past weekend with basically the same specs... they didn't have any left in stock tho, just the display model... altho it was 299eur...

[Grant Lamontagne]

I was interested in the Acer as well, but if Dell is doing the same thing cheaper...

Def

[Whoey]

Another alternative : http://www.slashgear.com/medion-akoya-mini-e1210-unboxed-0112340.php
(Medion Akoya) basically the same as the Acer with 120gb and winXP... goes for 400eur here, saw one today, as well as the Acer Aspire One, got to play around a bit with the Acer, it boots in about 15-20sec... smooth, looks great. I think I'll hold out for the 6 cell linux edition with 120gb hd and 1gb ram vs the current 8gb SSD, 512mb ram 3 cell model, the 6 cell supposedly gets 7 hours from the battery... (winxp version gets 5.5h)

things are going to get interesting on this front...

[Whoey]

Some friends of ours picked up the 280eur Asus EEEpc 4G with WindowsXP... I have it for a few days to install some stuff and tune it a bit... will give some feedback when I'm done.

[Grant Lamontagne]

That's the 7" version?

Def

[Whoey]

yup, after mucking about with it for a bit, the screen is too small... plus windows keeps reminding you everytime you reboot that the resolution is very low (800x480) which is really annoying... most dialogs drop below the bottom of the screen which means you have to drag the window up to click ok... it does have a 800x600 mode where you can scroll up and down the screen, which is almost just as annoying...

Another funny thing is the support DVD that comes with it (there is no cdrom...) I'm sure for an extra 10eur they could have made it a usb disk...

I would not recommend getting anything lower than 9inch for a UMPC... ideally one that does 1000x smth... I'm still rather keen on the ACER Aspire One... especially the 120Gb model...

[Grant Lamontagne]

Acer Aspire One is 8.9", but I guess that's close enough?

I'm looking at one of those too, but I think I'll leave it running Linux.  Of course that Dell's stats look pretty close to the Acer's, and significantly cheaper.  I like significantly cheaper...

Def

[Whoey]

Can't wait to see the Dells in the wild... if they actually produce what they've been pitching, it'll sell like crazy

[Grant Lamontagne]

Especially at about $80 less than the Acer, which is several hundred dollars less than the comparable HP and ASUS models!

Def

[Neil]

   I find this out after getting an eee 901.  That's life     

Still musn't grumble, its nice to be finally using something not made out of the guts of multiple scrap machines.  I'm really liking the battery life as well; around seven hours for surfing 

Neil

[Grant Lamontagne]

That's the biggest problem with my laptop- I am lucky to get an hour out of it in power saver mode, doing little more than word processing.  It's not terribly portable when you are jumping from one power outlet to the next.  And, an extended battery will run almost as much as a UMPC.

Def

[Whoey]

consider turning off a lot of the eyecandy in vista... also, check for updates... I think they fixed some of the power eating features built into vista... that might extend the battery life a bit... also turn down the screen brightness as much as you can stand, but it's still usable...

[Grant Lamontagne]

Done, done and done, which is why I get a whole hour out of it.

Word to the wise, when buying a laptop, NEVER get the entry level battery.  Splurge for the better one, as it costs a fraction of what it would to buy the better battery afterwards.

Def

[Offroad]

I have a Acer aspir one with XP comming my way, due to arrive tomorrow, looking forward to test it.