UK Netbook Review

Ever wondered how much it costs a manufacturer to build a netbook? If so, here’s an intersting breakdown of a popular netbook from China, with each of the parts broken down for cost. When all the part prices are added up, and compared to the units retail cost, there’s only a surprisingly slim profit margin left for the manufacturer. We’ve known for some time that profit margins are razer slim for comptuter hardware, and that seems to be more true than ever in the case of netbooks.

According to Digitimes, ASUS, HP, Dell and MSI all have tablet netbook projects in the pipeline, ready to launch in 2010. The timing probably has a lot to do with the upcoming launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system which has much improved ‘touch’ features over Windows Vista and XP.

Asus has introduced the Asus 1005ha-M (reported by Blogee here) which has sparked a bit of a debate in the netbook community – Matte vs. Glossy screens. First, the whole glossy screen phenomenon is quite recent.  If you’ll remember, up until a few years ago everything has a plain matte screen.   Most heavy netbook users [...]

The new Nohrtech Edubook Gecko runs on AA batteries and is available now for just $199 if you buy one, or as low as $160 if you buy them in bulk. The hitch? – they’re only available to order from Thailand at the moment. Also, the netbook runs on an Xcore86 chip. It’s a bargain for sure, but just how well is that Xcore86 system on a chip going to cope with Windows XP has yet to be seen.

Asus launched new netbook products at CES, but they’re at it again.  Most recently, they’ve retought the form factor of its leanest and thinnest netbook in the form of the Asus EeePC 1008ha.  . Asus has a bunch of new netbooks on display at CeBIT in Germany, including the brand new ultrathin Eee PC 1008HA [...]