calling them lilliputers? perhaps a competition for a favourite name or acronym? they are technically umpcs. however i think that the umpc has been a failure. they’ve been around for a few years but haven’t set the world on fire (apart from the odd battery problem ). the eee is listed on the wikipedia entry for umpc.

the olpc/eee pc have whatever you think of them changed the entire mobile market. if i take a laptop out of my bag people pay it no attention. when i take a eee pc out of my bag everybody wants to see it or get one. i haven’t seen that level of technolust since my psion series 3a which had everybody asking to try it out. ok maybe my palm iiix got a few nerds drooling.

but the eeepc has gotten many non technical people to ask were i got it. they are attracted by it’s small size. astonished by its cheap price and for those who have bought one happy with its ease of use. i made it very clear that out of the box that it does not run windows but that they should be familiar with firefox, thunderbird and open office as i have been installing those on customers systems for years.

so perhaps they need a name that classifies them. i like netbook but thats a name used by psion for their series of devices. i think of them as Small Cheap Laptops SCL. there have been small laptops before oqo, toshiba libretto, original hp omnibook and such like. there are cheap laptops. it is the combination of the 2 that makes these devices unique and so popular. but do we then set a specific upper price $500 and screen size 10″?

i actually tried using the term lilliputer when a person who wanted to buy one was asking about it. i mentioned this site only for them to point out that lilliput is the name of the fictional location not lillipute (damn spelling nazi). most people are more accepting of acronymns as they have to deal with them in every day life anyway.

I don’t care if you call them liliputers. The name doesn’t stand a hope in hell of catching on, but I know what you mean. Anyone who really has a bug up their ass about your term is going to go apoplectic at your URL and storm off in a fit of pique anyway.

I am most curious to know what the MSI Wind’s keyboard is like. I was previously very enthusiastic about the HP 2133, I was even willing to overlook the sluggish VIA processor. But releasing the thing without a proper set of Linux (or even XP) drivers suggests that either A: HP rushed a half-assed product out to market. B: They really don’t give a rats ass about the consumer market.

In which case their launch model has lost all attraction for me. Maybe they’ll take it in a direction I’ll like, but right now it looks like HP is being the company I know and loathe.

So far the MSI Wind looks interesting (albeit MORE powerful than I really need) but my main concern right now is whether it has a comfortable keyboard. I’m a demon typist and if I can’t have a keyboard that lets me bust out at least a reasonable fraction of my 75WPM magic, it’s not useful to me.

Hear, hear on the keyboard!!

Aren't they too big to be UMPC?

Usually I hear UMPC used about much smaller PCs – tiny touch-tablets, or those miniscule almost-handhelds with slide-out keyboards.

The Eee, Mini-Note and friends are essentially notebooks, they're just smaller – hence, I usually hear them referred to as “Subnotes” (sub-notebooks) … makes sense to me.

But since they're not marketed under any specific term, who cares – I guess you can call them whatever you want. How about “Smurf PCs”?

The MSI Wind U100 is showing up on a number of European online vendor sites. Just Google those three words. I've seen it on .cz, .fi, and .nl . A little above €400.

The MSI Wind U100 is showing up on a number of European online vendor sites. Just Google those three words. I've seen it on .cz, .fi, and .nl . A little above €400.