The Gigabyte M912 may not be coming to the US anytime soon, but if you happen to live in Germany, it looks like you should be able to pick one up within a few weeks. Eee PC News.de discovered that the Notebook Shop is selling M912s in several configurations — including two versions that are described as having no operating system.
Now, since there are two models listed that run Windows Vista and two that are listed without an OS, I’m going to assume this is a typo and that the computers are actually running Ubuntu. We already saw the M912 running Ubuntu Netbook Remix at Computex, so we know it’s capable of running the OS. and Gigabyte doesn’t have to pay any licensing fees to include Ubuntu, so I can’t imagine why they would sell a piece of hardware without any software when there’s a perfectly usable OS available for free.
But even if this isn’t a typo, and Gigabyte is selling a computer in Germany with no OS, this is actually a good thing as it makes it perfectly clear to customers that they can choose the operating system they want to use. The Notebook Shop is charging between 459 € and 569 € or $726 and $901 for the Gigabyte M912, depending on the operating system and amount of RAM you select.
Oliver: Not really a problem for touch typists, just put in a different driver. Here at work i use a UK keyboard with a danish driver – it acts like a danish keyboard. Of course i need to know where all the keys are though.
It cracks me up that they have listed the computer as having an “Intel Nuclear Processor”, but that is probably just a weird web translation bug 🙂
Yeah, that’s what happens when you try using Google Translate on a page that
says Intel Atom. I’ve seen the same weird translation before. And I chuckle
every time I see it too. 🙂
If you plan on picking one up in Germany, be aware that German keyboards are quite a bit different than US keyboard layouts. For starters Y and Z are swapped (QWERTZ instead of QWERTY), and then there are Umlaut character keys. Plus a lot of the non alpha/number symbols are on different keys. It’s easy to get used to if it’s your only computer, but if you regularly switch between different machines with different keyboards, you’ll not have a lot of fun.
I asked Expansys about the M912V, since they carry other Gigabyte UMPCs. The response was that they will be carrying it, at least for sale to Ireland and the UK. They tend to be expensive, though.