On 2 Sep 2008, at 19:04, Dilwyn Jones wrote:
We had a brief discussion of using the WINE/QPC2 combination on the
new Linux-based notebook PCs such as the Asus Eeepc.
I notice that Maplin are selling a £160 notebook and Elonex a £99
notebook along the same lines. Anyone tried these machines to see if
either uQLx or WINE/QPC2 could be run on them. Details are at www.maplin.co.uk
(product code A98HX) and www.elonex.co.uk (Elonex One). The Elonex
machine is reviewed in the current Computeractive issue 275.
The Elonex machine in particular being a sub-£100 machine would make
a decent cheap portable WINE/QPC2 or uQLx system if those emulators
work on it.
Seriously.
These machines are rubbish.
The Elonex Onet - not their £99 one - is the same as the Maplin. They
are underpowered, based on a Chinese knock-off MIPS CPU, in the case
of the One (rubber keyboard tablet) at 300MHz/128MB RAM/1GB SSD, and
the Onet at 400MHz. They run a dated version of Linux and lack
hardware resources. They're also very overpriced for what you get in
the case of the Onet/Maplin - the Asus Eee 701 is under £150 if you
shop around and offers superior specification, the £189 price point
mooted for the Elonex Onet is a mere £10 saving on the Acer Aspire
One, which at £199 offers greater resolution display (1024 x 600), 8GB
SSD (£229 gives 120GB HD), 512MB RAM (expandable to 1.5GB) and a
1.6GHz Intel CPU with decent cache and performance.
There are many good SCC (Small, Cheap Computer) models, Asus and Acer
leading the market, but the MSI Wind (also sold as an Advent), and
Dell's forthcoming machine also offer good specifications for a decent
price.
The £40 (at most) saving you make on the Maplin model is costing you
useful screen resolution, useful storage, useful RAM and most
significantly, a useful CPU that can handle modern Linux distros
comfortably. In addition the Acer offers the hardware hack inclined
motherboard pads for a Mini PCI-e slot and SIM card slot that will
allow an internal 3G modem, 3 USB ports, VGA out (lacking on the
Elonex/Maplin, IIRC), and a very useful feature on the SSD models -
TWO card slots. One SDHC slot for storage expansion, and one "card
reader" with support for various formats.
QL on a SCC? Fantastic idea. Love to have a good QL environment
running under Linux on my Acer or Eee. Elonex, however, have not
produced something worthwhile for the marketplace here. When the
specifications became apparent, I cancelled my order with them (and
getting a refund, despite a vague "28 days delivery" after waiting
since February for the machines to ship from the pre-order date - even
though the computers are rebranded Chinese machines that have been in
production for some time already, was rather difficult and took
threats of discussing the matter with the card clearing company).
Richard
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