UK Netbook Review

On the same day that we hear about a certain internet giant (ahem, Google) announce its plans to create a netbook operating system, a much smaller startup operating out of France announces that is has secured 4.2 million dollars in funding for its own netbook OS. Netbook operating systems are gettting exciting!

The firms behind the Series A (first round) of funding are Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners. One advisor at Atomico Venture, Niklas Zennström was also involved with Kazaa, Skype and Joost.

Google has announced on their blog, their new Google Chrome OS today. Over 30 million people have already downloaded the Google Chrome browser, and now Google is focusing their efforts on a Google Chrome operating system, notably, a separate project from Android. Here is how they describe it:

ASUS have been showing the Eee Keyboard since CES back in January, but it’s always been running MS Windows XP. Now the Eee Keyboard –has been given a shot of Moblin, Intel’s Linux-based OS. This model is only a prototype at present, but there’s no reason that ASUS couldn’t deliver a Moblin version alongside the Windows XP Eee Keyboard.

The netbook operating system, Moblin, has only had their v2.0 Beta out in the wild a few weeks, but it’s already gotten a refresh.  To be honest, there’s not a huge amount to report here.  Just a few bug fixes and talk of some new features but we don’t know what they are. There is [...]

Netbooks and Windows have, so far, been an interesting combination.  Instead of running the latest and greatest from Redmond (Vista), netbooks have preferred Windows XP since it’s less power hungry.  That matches well with the lower powered netbook processors.  As a result, Microsoft extended the life of the XP operating system, and charged sustantially less [...]