June seems super far away when I know that a large number of netbooks are going to be introduced.  I call them netbooks, because they are small laptops designed for simple online use, much like a umpc, but mainly for email and that sort of thing.  They are going to be introduced in early June, at the same time as the atom processor is available, a.k.a silverthorne.  It seems like the chips in these netbooks will all be 1.6gHz and support Hyper Threading.  The performance won't be outstanding, but the battery life sure will be.  The MSI Wind, for example, will be able to run for 6 hours on a 6 cell battery.

Eee vs Wind

If Asus does indeed release a 901 Eee PC on June 3 then I may just get it, if the price and features are right.  I am so excited about MSI and HP adding some more laptops into this lowcost small laptop market.  Eee PC needs some competition, competition is good, and MSI is going to be offering a laptop that might be better than the Eee PC for less money.

Here are a list of differences between the Eee PC and MSI Wind:

- Cost, the 10 inch MSI Wind appears to come in less than the 8.9 inch Eee PC

- Hard drive, the MSI Wind will have a 2.5 inch drive that is 80gb, while the Eee PC is offering a 20gb SSD.  So the SSD will add a half hour to an hour of battery life, but reduce the size of storage.  20gb may be enough, I am not sure yet though.  But if the trade off is only 30 minutes of battery life and possibly not even that great of a performance increase then the Wind might be the way to go.

- Bluetooth support, this is not a big one for me.  The MSI Wind offers Bluetooth in its XP version, the Linux version will not.

- RAM, the MSI Wind will come with an empty slot where you can expand the 1gb of RAM.  You can expand the Eee PC, but you will be removing memory when you do.

- Keyboard size, the MSI Wind will sport a larger keyboard

- Screen size, in the US you will only be able to get the 10inch MSI Wind, but currently the largest Eee PC is 8.9 inch.

MSI is targeting people who want a second or third laptop, this will be my second.  The smart thing to do would probably be to use the money to buy a more powerful laptop than I currently own.  However, I am a strong advocate of voting with my money.  My laptop is 2 years old and the current laptops on the market are hardly more advanced than what I have.  Why should I support a stagnant market, instead I would rather invest my money in this new market and encourage the production of cheap notebooks.  Moreover, at this point I am supporting the newcomer, MSI, as I think ASUS needs more competitive prices for the Eee PC. 

Other Options

The OLPC has some inherent flaws that I will not go into now, but stay tuned for a discussion of these flaws.  My initial attraction to the OLPC was to use it as an eReader.  However, after using it, I realize that this is not a straight forward process, and secondly the battery life is not what was advertised.  From my timings, having the OLPC laptop in eReader mode the battery would only last 3 hours.  Perhaps under a bright light without the screen light on it would be longer, but I am not planning to read like this.

On this same note, I was considering the Kindle.  However, $400 and only being able to read on it.  I could do more, but storage would be an issue for mp3s and I do not like the screen flickering.  Also, I do not like the way that you would highlight text, with a scroll wheel.  This is a device that will probably get an upgrade in the fall, but until then, I am not sure I would buy one.  I do see the attraction, but the price of books online should be much less and the ability to read it like a book needs to be more well thought out.  I want to highlight, I want to share, I want to take notes on the pages.  I do all of these things when I read, and they have missed the mark on all of them.

At this point I am turning to the Wind and Eee PC with the Silverthorne chip as a way to read books.  Additionally, I can do a lot of the same things I currently use my laptop for, but this one will be super portable.  The MSI Wind is getting my vote so far, but we will have to wait until June to see what else is available.