By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

A couple months ago, INQUIRER.net reviewed three of the first Intel Atom-based ultra-portable notebooks in the Philippines, the Asus Eee PC 1000H, MSI Wind, and the Acer Aspire One A110L. The Aspire One was the lowest model among the three, having nearly the same features as the original Asus Eee PC, including an 8-Gigabyte solid-state drive, a 512-megabyte memory and running a Linux operating system. Nevertheless, it matched quite well with the Asus and MSI Atom models due to its low power consumption and basic operating system.

This time, Acer Philippines lent us a higher model of the Acer Aspire One with all the bells and whistles. What Acer hopes to do with the Aspire One A150X is to find a suitable market for higher level ultra-mobile personal computer (UMPC) users. These are people who want to still do some basic desktop editing done on a Microsoft Windows platform while retaining a handy device. Essentially, the user must already have a notebook or a desktop computer, with the UMPC used only as a secondary device.

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By Alexander Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THEY’RE small, fast and inexpensive. They’re also among the first truly ultramobile PCs that are based on the new Intel Atom processor. We test them side by side to see which comes out the best in the litter. Not surprising, they’re all made in Taiwan.

MSI, Asus and Acer are among the strongest Asian computer brands in the market today. They are also among the least expensive compared to more established Western brands like HP and Dell. When Asus introduced the Eee PC in 2007, it pointed to a new direction that few computer manufacturers dared to go: small form factors notebook.

Among, if not the first, true ultramobile PC (UMPC) is the Toshiba Libretto, which used an Intel Pentium processor, a Microsoft Windows operating system and a hard disk drive. Its small size, equally small keyboard (about 60 percent of a full size keyboard), and less than 1 kilogram weight made it appealing to people who wanted mobility. However, it was priced much higher than a full-size laptop. Since then, many manufacturers have attempted to create small form-factor notebooks at less than stellar prices but most opted to go for powerful electronic personal digital assistants. The archetypal RIM Blackberry also led to a revolution of PC-like mobile devices, which pushed back motivation to create UMPCs.
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ASUS is clearly dominating the ultra-mobile notebook market with its Eee PCs. But local executives said that it will remain a niche player in this ever-competitive market for notebooks.

The photo features the Eee Box (left) which comes with a 16-inch LCD monitor, while to the right
is the Eee PC 900, the first to have the Intel Atom processor, which has not yet been introduced to the Philippines due to the availability of the Eee PC 1000 series.

INQUIRER.net community evangelist Alexander Villafania talks to Asus Philippines Country Manager Leon Yu who stressed that its latest Intel Atom-based ultra-mobile notebooks will not compete with other brands using the same processor.

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