A closer look at the VIA Openbook

I’m starting to think Sascha from Eee PC News.de has too many mini-laptops on his hands. OK, there’s really no such thing. But Sascha got a chance to stop by VIA headquarters in Taipei and snapped more than a dozen photos of a new VIA Openbook prototype. It’s the one on the far left int he image above (the other computers are an Eee PC 900, Eee PC 901, and HP Mini-Note).

This is VIA’s latest reference design, which means that you’ll probably never see a device called the VIA Openbook hit the market. Rather, companies like Everex and HP can adopt the design, maybe tweak it a little, and release computers under their own brand names.

As you can see, the Openbook reference design is similar in size and shape to the other mini-notebooks. It’s got what looks like a fairly narrow touchpad, but it does at least have two distinct buttons for right and left clicking.

The computer’s got three USB ports, an Ethernet Jack, and a VGA output. And up close and personal, it looks a whole lot slicker than VIA’s current Nanobook reference design.

Posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008, 2:32 pm by Brad Linder

Garamond

Seeing these keyboards side by side makes me wonder why Via and Asus (and Acer and Dell for that matter) don’t first design a compact but highly usable keyboard, then an optimized screen to go with it, and only then design the rest of the ultraportable computer around it. HP and MSI seem to have the right approach. If only HP had gotten the insides right. The Via reference design looks good but for the keyboard.
Garamond

Seeing these keyboards side by side makes me wonder why Via and Asus (and Acer and Dell for that matter) don't first design a compact but highly usable keyboard, then an optimized screen to go with it, and only then design the rest of the ultraportable computer around it. HP and MSI seem to have the right approach. If only HP had gotten the insides right. The Via reference design looks good but for the keyboard.
Garamond

Seeing these keyboards side by side makes me wonder why Via and Asus (and Acer and Dell for that matter) don't first design a compact but highly usable keyboard, then an optimized screen to go with it, and only then design the rest of the ultraportable computer around it. HP and MSI seem to have the right approach. If only HP had gotten the insides right. The Via reference design looks good but for the keyboard.

A closer look at the VIA Openbook

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