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Dell Shows Off Its Eee PC Rival
Tom Moreland tips us to photos of Dell's answer to the Eee PC on the Direct2Dell site. Dell posted these after an attendee at the D conference spotted Michael Dell carrying one. The company hasn't released any details, so you can take these with a grain of salt — from a commenter to Dell's post: "Here are the specs for the Dell Mini Inspiron: Atom 1.6 GHz, 3 USB ports, Ethernet, Card reader, Kensington lock, Adapter socket, Mic/line-out, VGA port, screen resolution at 1280×800. Scheduled to be released before the end of June 2008. It costs less than $500."
Given that this is being compared to the EEE, physical dimensions are important. Guessing based on the pencil in the pictures, this looks like it is maybe 8" x 5" (20 cm x 12 cm).
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The most interesting question to me is which OS Dell will choose to install on it. Hopefully it will be a Linux distro...
There are models for 300 bucks and they think that they will sell well at $500?
It may have some potential. Having a good cheap system to surf with is definitely a good idea. But for $500 you can get a regular fully functional laptop in many instances.
Dell's going to be competing with their own price points no matter where they put this product in the spectrum from 3-500$ they'll be cannibalizing their own market.
Andy
Notice how there is already some creep in specs and price, none of the ones anounced since the first eeepc (including the new 9" version) is lighter or cheaper and most of them seem to be quite a bit more.
Instead I would like to see them stick at 300 euros and just gradually improve the spec.
You can just increase the font size then, or set the resolution lower - it's definitely better to have too high a resolution than too small! And if this thing is going to be used with Windows, 800 is much better for being able to get to the buttons at the bottom of large dialogs and such.
which is totally what she said
It's a good thing that most Linux distributions use Vector fonts, and allow you to set the screen resolution in dpi.
Actually, such a high resolution on such a small screen means super-smooth fonts, and easy readability... which thus far could only be obtained on high-resolution laptops (1650x1080 on 15" and 1920x1200 on 17").
Considering that the cheap Inspirons have 1280x800 on a 15" screen, just imagine the improvement.
Does it run Vista?
Then increase the text size. Higher resolution is always better, even on a small screen. With higher DPI we can abandon ugly hacks such as font hinting. I want a monitor with the resolution of paper. The poor interface scaling of Windows XP is holding back the market for high resolution monitors, but other OSs don't have this problem.
http://gizmodo.com/393815/exclusive-dell-mini-inspiron-their-first-mini-laptop link to actual photos
Yes, the keyboard seems to be pretty darn big. However, as always they managed to screw up key placement. Apostrophe is not in its regular place, shift is waaaay over to the right of the up arrow. What are these people smoking? Make the [ENTER] key smaller and put apostrophe where it belongs. Instead of where the apostrophe is now, put the slashdot keys there (/ and/or .), and put shift in their place. Why do all these laptop manufacturers need to be individualistic with keyboard design? It's not like keyboards have feelings. Users do, though. :)
-Palal
Some of these specs, like the 1280x800 resolution screen look beyond the M$ limits for such devices. Good for Dell, they know what the market really looks like.
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It looks suspiciously like a rebranded MSI Wind (http://msiwind.net/) subnotebook to me. All of the specs are EXACTLY the same. The MSI wind is even available in red...
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Portability. It's the same argument that people made back in the days when laptops were not ubiquitous. You can get a cheaper more powerful desktop, so why do you want to buy a laptop? Same here, scaled to new ultraportable devices.
The ASUS eeePC is currently selling like hotcakes, and the price range is currently in the neighborhood of 400-500$. Your argument has been around for quite a while ("I can get a full featured laptop for the same money"). The problem is this laptop isn't a regular laptop, but a new category of devices. Something you can carry easily, light, and robust. Dell isn't foolish, after the success of the eeePC, the HP mini-note and new devices coming from MSI, they want to make sure of their presence in that growing market.
So yes, you can get something bigger for similar money. But you get a all different device. Exactly like the MacBook Air (why spending so much for something slower than a regular Mackbook?) these are new devices, for people who value portability over added features.
In addition, if these devices run Linux natively (as they pretty much all do, in addition to WinXP), you get a modern fast OS, without you having to do anything to it, it simply work out of the box. In fact some people say that the Linux version are for those unexperienced, considering how easy they are to maintain.... Can you say the same about the crap-loaded $500 cheap "conventional" laptops?
Well this explains why Mark Shuttleworth has confirmed that Ubuntu is coming out with a version for UMPCs. Dell needs a linux distro to compete on the low end against Asus and the rest.
I disagree. Most modern web pages need at least 1024 pixels wide. You can always make things bigger if a certain app hurts your eyes, but you can never get back resolution that the panel doesn't have. Thus, it is always better to go with a higher resolution than a lower one.
I'm really surprised, however, that nobody has criticized the fact that all these machines use legacy VGA. I mean, is it really too much to ask for them to use DVI? It already costs more money to buy a panel that still supports VGA even today. VGA is on its way out and the only computers I see that still use it are cheap PC laptops. Why!?! Why would anyone build a computer with only analog video output these days? It's not like it is that much more expensive to provide DVI, and I consider any machine that doesn't do so to be very non-future-proof, i.e. a dubious proposition.
These days, the only thing keeping me from buying any of the ultra-mobile machines is the lack of DVI in any machine with a small enough footprint to safely use on an airplane tray table. Netcraft confirmed VGA was dying five years ago. At this point, the only thing left to do is go through its pockets and look for loose change....
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Absolutely horrendous keyboard! Too small and cramped for me to be able to stand there and type out a few sentences at normal speed.
Not sure how big your hands are, but mine are pretty big, and I've had a 7" EEE since they came out - I absolutely LOVE the keyboard for how small it is. I haven't had a problem typing ~60WPM on it (I normally type ~65WPM). You don't want to type for hours on it, but nobody would want to do that on *any* subnotebook.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
can this new dell fit in my jacket pocket? by far, the most excellent thing about the eee pc is that it is so incredibly portable without making significant sacrifices. furthermore, with 4gb of space, there are many choices for an os.
my hands aren't small, but i can manage to touch-type reasonably well on it. frankly, i don't think anyone should be alloted any credence when complaining about the keyboard size on such a small system. it's much like griping about the lack of luggage-space on a motorcycle. if your major complaints are about the keyboard, you must not be the target market.
my only complaints are about the cpu, which seems to be underclocked to 630mhz, and the difficulty in booting from an sd card (i'm sure i'll figure it out).
Digital released the Microvax II which had, if memory serves me, virtually the same performance as a full-sized VAX at about a third or a quarter of the price. More to the point, it was significantly better than the VAX-11/750, better as in double the performance, for about half the price. Killed all the older lines dead, instantly.
Wang released the Wang 1200 WPS, its CRT-based word processing system, at a time when their previous non-CRT-based offering was still selling well. Killed the older line dead, instantly.
Apple released the iPod Nano about eighteen months after the introduction of the iPod Mini line, and barely six months after a major refresh of the iPod Mini line, killing the minis dead instantly.
(And, for the record, the Digital and Wang examples occurred during the upward trajectories of those companies and were major, major successes for them).
Companies don't have to put the customers' interests ahead of their own, but they need to put a high priority on it. Companies that concentrate too much on what's good for them instead of what's good for their customers... rationalizing product lines, avoiding cannibalization, holding back new features, and generally not producing the best products they know how to produce (e.g. IBM foot-dragging on the 80386) get in trouble. Their locked-in customers may go along for a while, but customers aren't stupid and they'll be steaming about it, and delighted to give the company its comeuppance.
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No matter what features the EEE has, it was designed to be low cost. Any competitor must also be low cost. $500 is not cheap for a laptop these days.
Why does dell need to make an EEE competitor when it ALREADY HAS a $399 laptop you can buy today. The Dell Vostro 1000 has an AMD Sempron 3600+, XP Home, 15.4 inch Wide Screen, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD, CD Burner, 802.11g Wifi, and 256MB integrated video.
At least in Linux I can move the dialog boxes by alt+dragging anywhere on the window. If there is a Windows equivalent of this I would love to know about it!
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Yes you can. So my question to you then is, why are people snatching up these mini-notebooks left and right, with companies seemingly finding an urgent need to enter the niche?
Is it possible that you're missing something? Or do you ascribe the success of these devices to marketing and gullibility? I ask because I've seen your argument before, and responded to it before, but the responses never seem to register.
So what is your answer? Why are people going against what you think to be the intelligent choice? I ask again, is it possible that you missed something and that 500 dollar laptop you're touting doesn't measure up for some reason? I bet if you examine the two devices, you'll see the major difference that makes these devices desirable.
Hint: it's not processor speed, or hard drive size, or screen resolution. Those things matter little to the people considering an EEEPC or one of its competitors.
You assume that twitter is attempting to support free software, and is doing it poorly. I think it's much more likely that he's attempting to poorly support free software, and is performing that task admirably.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
You are using an Inspiron, the 'value' (read: CHEAP) end of Dell's laptop offerings and complaining about it? You get what you pay for, sir. Spend a little bit more for a Latitude D630 and you will have a much more reliable laptop with higher quality hardware and a more consistent standard of hardware for the overall model line.
If you want a laptop that allows a custom video card, you need to spec the stuff you want BEFORE YOU BUY, and keep a cognizant eye of what gotchas may be involved. Basically, do some research, and not just reviewing halfassed slashdot comments like ours.
After 15 years of experiencing all sorts of good, bad, magical, unreliable, and just plain retarded computer manufacturers, I must opine that you are out of your mind if you think Asus anything better than Dell. They both are cutthroat businesses looking to save a buck where noone might notice, and whenever possible you avoid the lowest end laptops/etc, such as Inspiron.
Don't try to cut corners and save some bucks then complain when you made a glaringly bad decision. (Ubuntu preinstalled on a Dell? Did you do NO research prior to grabbing the first Ubuntu mania inspired laptop you could find?)
Cheers.
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