Headlines - Maplin joins the sub-laptop party with £170 model

[HEXUS]

UK electronics chain has unveiled its own super-cheap sub-laptop called the ?minibook?.

Read more.

[this_is_gav]

Oh sweet lord. This is doomed to failure. It's not worth £170, so if it rises to £220, it's immediately into ACER Aspire One territory, which beats it in every possible way (other than being a touch bigger presumably). Ironically, they're selling the original Eee PC for the price they claim this will retail at...

I struggle to even consider a for this as a netbook. It's more an oversized phone without the phone... I just can't see the point.

Upgrade the CPU and the RAM and storage is hopelessly limited. Upgrade the RAM and the CPU and storage are hopelessly limited... you get the idea. It's just horribly under-specced.

This is a company which have thought "ooh, this is our chance to branch out and get onto this cash-cow!" without thinking it through at all. It's not going to sell more than a handful at the £170 price point and absolutely zero at the inflated price.

[TheAnimus]

this is much more of a PDA, for a start its a RISC CPU, so you can't easily compare it to a x86 without risking apple and oranges conversions. But a 400Mhz RISC CPU can be quite snappy in the right hands, never come accross this one before thou!

[tefster]

Isn't this just the RM Asus (http://www.rm.com/primary/Products/p...cref=PD1030046) rebadged ?

[Agent]

Isn't this just the RM Asus (http://www.rm.com/primary/Products/p...cref=PD1030046) rebadged ?

Nope.

I saw the boxes for these at Maplin a few hours ago....looked really cheaply made. Didn't have an actual model on show though.

[iworrall]

A tenner more will get you an EeePC 701 in the Toys 'R' Us "Back to School" sale.
See Here.

[Biscuit]

There isnt really anything in maplin worth buying, maybe cable ties and electronic tools... everything they sell is really overpriced and cheaply made. They tried to charge me just shy of £30 for 30m of CAT-5 cable when its under £10 at scan or microdirect - insane!

[lee_uk]

i work for maplins and it is the same one that scan are selling

[directhex]

firefox on 400mhz risc

ehm... no.

[Biscuit]

my HTC TYTN II has a 400MHz CPU

[MadduckUK]

my HTC TYTN II has a 400MHz CPU

my ancient iPaq 3950 had a 400MHz cpu... 6 years ago :/ this thing is a joke

[TheAnimus]

firefox on 400mhz risc

ehm... no.

Do you know how many IPC this is?

The ones used in mobile phones often need 4 clocks per instruction.

If you think how fast a strong arm was (225mhz iirc) and that had little problem rendering the web pages of the day, i used to use that thing right up till 2001 too.

I'm not saying its not going to poo, just that its always worth keeping an open mind.

[Breezey]

i work for maplins and it is the same one that scan are selling

my condolences, suprised it isnt £300+ nowing maplin, saw a 8600gt in there for well over £100 the other day.

[directhex]

Do you know how many IPC this is?

The ones used in mobile phones often need 4 clocks per instruction.

If you think how fast a strong arm was (225mhz iirc) and that had little problem rendering the web pages of the day, i used to use that thing right up till 2001 too.

I'm not saying its not going to poo, just that its always worth keeping an open mind.

rendering pages from 2001 is one thing - doing it with something as "large" as firefox is another matter

[TheAnimus]

True firefox is a bit of a CPU hog, but i would of thought that asside from flash, it would be possible for a very well designed RISC to coupe at 400Mhz.

When i think how well the StrongARM couped 3 years after it was obsolete, compared to a PII-350....