When comes to UMPC, most of you think the Asus Eee PC? Well, Dell wants to jump onto the mini UMPC bandwagon as well, with a mini Inspiron (not the official name as there is no announcement from Dell just yet) being the fruit of their labors. There’s no word on what operating system will this diminutive computer run on, nor how much it will cost, but it does feature a trio of USB 2.0 ports, a memory card reader, VGA out, and an Ethernet port. To satisfy both parties, Dell should offer both Windows and Linux where Linux have lower price tag. Do you think this will be Atom-powered, and just how much internal memory will it hold?

This rumor comes from two different sources; the 4G wireless part is apparently from a preview site from Asus themselves and suggests that a new version of the Eee will have WiMAX. The other part comes from some sources that tipped off a Taiwanese paper that Asus was already manufacturing Eee’s with 8.9-inch screens instead of the 7-inch screens that are currently included.

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We are all stuffed with those turkeys and wine. What’s next? Of course, Boxing Day Sale!

The “Boxing Week Blowout” has begun online at Anitec.ca and here are some of the highlights:

Asus Eee PC Surf (Galaxy Black or White) Celeron-M Ultra-Portable Notebook - $299.95
Asus Eee PC 701 (Galaxy Black) Celeron-M Ultra-Portable Notebook - $379.95 How to Upgrade Memory
AMD Phenom 9500 (2.2 GHz) Quad-Core Socket AM2+ Processor - $188.95 5 Left at the time I’m writing this post!
Asus F3E-A1 Centrino Duo T7100 1.8GHz Notebook (15.4″ WXGA, 1GB DDR2-667, 120GB SATA, DVDRW, 802.11 a/b/g, FireWire, Card Reader, Webcam, Vista Home Premium) - $795.95
Connect3D 4GB Secure Digital Memory Card - $19.95
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40 GHz) Quad-Core Socket 775 Processor (looks like the retail box, though this isn’t confirmed) - $259.95
Chaintech GeForce 8800 GT 512MB PCI-Express 2.0 - $239.95
Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 512MB PCI-Express 2.0 - $219.95

Fresno schools buy 1,000 Eee PC to the students - Lucky Kids!!

Fresno Unified School District recently snagging 1,000 of the laptops in an attempt to boost student scores. Personally, I think the kids will use it to play games / surfing the web rather than use it as educational purposes.

According the Chronicle, it seems that Asus has officially launched its $299 2G Surf model a little ahead of the January date we first heard about.

As of today, this is the best Asus Eee PC mod I’ve seen and this surely beats the $499 Eee PC 8GB, which has just 8GB of storage / shared video. EeeUser forum’s brave member Johnx took the $140 16GB Corsair Flash Voyager (plus a Bluetooth unit) and ran them off the USB connections from the Mini PCIe ports to make a 20GB, Bluetooth capable transformer of an Eee UMPC. Would you do this if you have a unit?

Source: Gizmodo

A number of Asus Eee ultra-portable computers have shipped with a devil “Warranty Void If Removed” on the memory access door. This label might have rebuked users who otherwise wanted to upgrade their Eee with more memory (normally 512MB or 1GB for the 4G models ~ $349.99. Up to 2GB with hack).

It says: “Asus wishes to assure its customers that merely breaking or removing this kind of seal will not void the Asus Limited Warranty” (full press release, Asus Eee page).

With Asus announced 3.8 million Eee PCs next year, I think many of us would want to buy one next year because it’s cheaper than some PDAs / iPod Touch.

After we posted the 3.8 mil Eee PCs shipment, IBM has filed a complaint against Asus. The big Tech giant claimed Asus is using patented technology for computers, they make for others as well as their own brand computers which impact IBM’s sales.

This low-cost UMPC laptop is certainly on my wish list for Christmas. It looks like Asus is giving us a bit more lights of the 7-inch Eee laptop. I saw a few places in downtown where Eee is in stock but the quatity is limited. Now Asus announced that they will ship approax. 3.8 mil of units in 2008 - this is always a good news for those mobile techies!

As Daily Tech reports, at least some of those 3.8 million laptops will be shipping with Windows — specifically, a stripped-down version of XP that’s been designed for “emerging markets”. - add about $30-60 to the price tag.

Source: Daily Tech