I’ve only heard from a few people that have ever bought a 7 inch mini-laptop with an Xburst processor. But at least a dozen different companies, mostly chinese ODMs have been showing these little underpowered laptops at trade shows for the past two years. I can usually spot them from a mile away thanks to the large bezel around the tiny display and the cramped keyboard and touchpad with mouse buttons located on the left and right side instead of under the touchpad.
I can sort of forgive the awkward button layout because of the small size of these netbooks. But the folks at HiVision appear to have come up with a novel solution: Their latest 7 inch mini-laptop has mouse buttons that are on the left and right bottom corners of the netbook. The buttons are still too small and a little awkward to press. But it’s a slight improvement.
Aside from the new touchpad, the HiVision PWS700B is pretty standard. It ha a 400MHz Xburst CPU, a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, 802.11b/g WiFi, LAN, 128MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage. It has a 200mAh battery, built-in mic and speakers, 3 USB ports, and mic and headphone jacks.
The PWS700B weighs just 1.4 pounds.
HiVision was also showing off a few other models at CES this year, including a model with an 8 inch display and an enourmous bezel, and another 7 inch model with a low power 300MHz VIA processor.
More pictures after the break.
buttons on the left and right beats the crap out of rocker buttons.
These would be great “starter computers” for young kids if they were cheap enough. Sadly, I doubt they could ever be sold cheap enough. Better to buy an old EeePC off of ebay.