back to article M&S to sell Elonex netbooks

Next time you shop for duck a l’orange in Marks & Spencer or buy briefs in Next, you might also take away an Elonex netbook. Handbag-sized netbooks with 7in displays from the British PC maker will “soon go on sale” for £99 ($149/€109) in both retail chains, The Telegraph reports. Nick Smith, chief executive of Elonex, said …

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  1. OFI
    Thumb Down

    Meh

    I'm guessing it will be the Elonex One T http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/07/09/elonex_unveils_second_scc/

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elonex_ONEt

    In which case it's just not worth the £100, it might have been when they first came up with the idea but with the EEEPC 701 selling around £135 with double the spec it's a no go.

  2. Toastan Buttar
    Thumb Up

    Elonex One-t ?

    I got an Elonex One-t for my Xmas. I initially ordered the basic Elonex One for £99 back in August or thereabouts, and they offered me the better-spec'ed One-t for the same price. It didn't actually arrive until early December, but I was in no hurry for it, as I was buying it as a hi-tech toy, not a 'second computer'.

    I've found it to be a pretty amazing little machine, actually. It's not the most powerful processor in the world, but the display is bright and sharp and the keyboard and mousepad are positive and decently-sized. You get 2-3 hours' worth of useage from a charge and providing you downgrade frame rate/bit rate/resolution, you can play movies for keeping the kids occupied in the car, etc. It can't hack Flash Video, so YouTube et al are not an option, but you can play most Flash animations and Flash games. (Strongbad E-Mails, YetiSports for example).

    There are some great (native code) games, apps and hints and tips on http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/ and there are quite a few unofficial communities springing up around it. Hell, some people are even developing their own lean-and-mean operating system:

    http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com/software/Xenium.htm

    Big thumbs-up from me !

  3. Neil Greatorex
    Coat

    "If you lose it on a train"

    So, these are targetted at Civil servants then?

  4. Andrew
    Thumb Up

    HMG

    "If you lose it on a train..."

    Good to see they're pitching them to Her Majesty's Government. The savings to the tax-payer could be substantial.

  5. Kyle
    Thumb Down

    BAHAHAHAHAHA!

    "Our netbooks are for people who want a better BlackBerry, with a proper screen and keypad"

    Having seen the first generation Elonex Ones, they'd struggle to be a better digital watch, never mind trying to compete with something like a BlackBerry. The OneT might be an improvement, but having seen the Elonex One after 3 months happily using a first-gen 701, I don't understand who's going to want to buy this that wouldn't prefer to drop the extra hundred quid and get a machine that's actually worth *using*.

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  7. David Edwards
    Stop

    £99 yeh right

    Hmm they have been promising £99 for ages and thier current one is same price as all the other Netbooks. Ill beleive it when I see it.

  8. Lottie

    Specs?

    Any details on the 'puters specs etc?

    I wonder if we'll see them for £45 in the next clearance shop with labels like "last seasons colours"?

  9. Toastan Buttar

    @David Edwards

    Believe it - my Elonex One-t cost £99 (plus £10 p+p). I added my own 2GB SD card to it (a fiver ?) and that's ample for storing lots of movies, MP3's and Flash files.

    The psychological sub-£100 barrier will turn it into an impulse 'gift' buy.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Elonex?

    Ah, I remember Elonex. The original PCs were overclocked rubbish, we bought 10 and 11 got sent back in the first year (one went back twice). Never again.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    I'm not big on marketing but

    If the best thing you can say about your product is that you will not care if you loose it, then perhaps I won't care enough to buy it in the first place!

    Can we have a scantly clad bit of totty showing us how to use it instead.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @ Toastan Buttar

    It's all very well to talk about the psychological sub-£100 barrier but you've got to admit that what you get for your £99 is still far less value for money than what you get for your £150 if you go for a 701, for example. Anyone who's taken a stroll around a high-street electronics retailer and seen the likes of the Aspire One or eee901 running won't see the One or OneT as anything other than an over-priced paperweight.

    I'd love to support Elonex, but they have to take the first step and release a product worth bloody buying. They've clearly lost faith in the One and OneT, given that the elonexone.co.uk now redirects to the main elonex shop page, and the ONE Union was quietly Guantanamo'd a while back now....maybe this is just a way of dumping/shifting the last of their stock.

  13. Colin Millar
    Pirate

    @ Toastan Butter

    A 2GB SD card is ample for storing "lots of movies"???

    Are you from a parallel universe?

  14. David Edwards
    Happy

    Stand Corrected

    OK, so they exist, Blimey id better keep my eyes open, still cant decide if I need one as my old Compaq Evo N200 I got for £200 from a refurbisher, keeps working (unless I try to use wifi and anythign encrypted on my 3g dongle) Which is all I want it for :-(

  15. Anonymous John

    If you lose it on a train

    This isn't just a missing netbook. It'a an M & S missing netbook..

  16. Andrew Garrard

    Not a netbook

    I'm sure it's a lovely bit of kit (and I've been mildly tempted ever since seeing Maplin selling them), but it's not x86-based, which means there just isn't the software availability for it that there is for "real" netbooks. ARM have the same problem with their attempts to get on the bandwagon - not that there haven't been non-x86 large-pda-with-keyboard devices for a long time, including the original Psion netbook. Essentially, a MIPS-based "netbook" is only slightly more compatible with x86 Linux software than a Windows Mobile-based phone is compatible with a Windows Vista laptop.

    I wish journalists would make a point of distinguishing similar-looking bits of technology that are different in important ways. The Elonex and various ARM devices are cool kit with price and battery life on their side, but the public ought to know what they're getting; I suspect M&S are setting themselves up for a lot of tech support calls. Otherwise I have three touchscreen mobile phones and an n770 all of which I'm going to start describing as netbooks (and I'll go back to calling my mini-note a subnotebook, like my librettos).

  17. Toastan Buttar
    Thumb Up

    @Colin Millar

    Currently posting this on my One-t sitting in front of t'telly. :-)

    Movies reduced to appropriate bitrates/resolution on my SD card at the moment:

    Idiocracy - 122.6 MB

    Office Space - 130.0 MB

    Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (for teen daughter) - 157.3 MB

    So, you're looking at around 12-14 movies per 2GB card ? Not too shoddy in my book !

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Great Price but what about Quality

    This is a great advertising ploy but having seen and been involved in this market for many years I can say this will create a lot of hype and some great sales BUT you will see some of the highest levels of returns on this product.

    Keep an eye on reviews before you buy on the quality!!!

    Be aware of this, the technology on this netbook compared to other netbooks on the market will be very poor. You will spend ages loading web pages, encounter problems with many websites. Have lots of other technical issues etc.

    As I said this is a great marketing ploy but just be careful, this could be the biggest flop I have seen a long time!

    The mention of a UK based maker is again a marketing ploy as all these products will be made in China not the UK like some of the other PC products in made in the past.

    Didnt Elonex have a netbook in Carphone Warehouse and then all of a sudden you hear Carphone warehouse no longer selling linux based netbooks and this was a much better model than this one will be?!?! A little warning I feel.....

    Good luck.....

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Defiantly be aware of quality

    The Advent I bought from PCWorld (I know I know I should have known better) has an intermittent screen fault, but since their software test doesn't spot the hardware fault they won't fix it, refund me or replace it even though it's still under warranty.

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