The 9″ Laptop Round Up

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief July 23, 2008 · 2 min read

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I rounded up three (3) UMPC in the 8.9 inch range and set them side by side to see which one gets your money’s worth — Acer Aspire One, HP 2133 Mini-note and the Asus Eee PC 900. Just like our 7-inch round-up, this chart will hopefully help you in your next purchase.

I’ve actually added the recently launched MSI Wind in the mix even if it’s in the 10-inch range already. We’ll have to wait for the official Philippine launch of the 10″ Asus Eee PC 1000 on July 29 too.

9 inch umpc laptop

A quick look will give you an obvious hint that the Acer Aspire One is a clear winner, primarily because of the price. The 512MB on-board memory can still be upgraded by adding in a 2GB RAM stick, effectively giving you 2.5GB. Likewise there’s an option to get an 80GB HDD instead of the 8GB SSD. The RAM and HDD upgrade could pad the price by around Php5k so even at Php24k, it’s still a good buy and at par with the MSI Wind.

The MSI Wind is already in the 10″ level but I added that one in the chart to give us a better perspective. A 2GB RAM for the laptop is about Php2.5k so getting the MSI Wind and upgrade the RAM to 2GB for a total of Php26.5k is also a nice option.

At this point, the Asus Eee PC 900 and HP Mini-note seems to be trailing. The Eee PC 901 which comes with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz is not available locally while the faster 1.6GHz HP 2133 is still expensive at Php35k.

On the battery life, the lower the watts per hour consumption, the better. The Celeron is a juice-guzzler while the Intel Atom certainly shows you get 50% better power consumption.

Will be attending a workshop this Friday on how to properly benchmark netbooks the 3 of the 4 listed above will be tested head to head. It should be interesting.

Which 8.9-inch UMPC is the clear winner in this roundup?

The Acer Aspire One is the clear winner, primarily because of its price.

Can the Acer Aspire One's memory be upgraded?

The 512MB on-board memory can be upgraded by adding a 2GB RAM stick, effectively giving 2.5GB.

Why is the Asus Eee PC 901 not included in the comparison?

The Eee PC 901, which comes with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz, is not available locally.

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acer aspire one asus eee pc 900 hp 2133 hp mini-note laptop philippines laptops msi wind ultraportable umpc

Abe Olandres

Editor-in-chief

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and is considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines.

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36 Comments

Ian · 17 years ago

“A quick look will give you an obvious hint that the Acer Aspire One is a clear winner, primarily because of the price. The 512MB on-board memory can still be upgraded by adding in a 2GB RAM stick, effectively giving you 2.5GB.”

Hi Yuga. Is this verified? Based on my research, it has a 1.5 GB limit? Please clarify as I’m contemplating on getting one…

Thanks!

tracy · 18 years ago

I’ll go for the MSI Wind…upgradable to 1G memory 80 HDD…6-ion cell battery available by end of July (4-5K according to PC corner) that covers 6 hours…Microsoft XP OS, bigger screen and keyboard but still super portable.

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 18 years ago

@allan – thanks for the correction. My Excel is showing Suse with my correction but forgot to re-upload the image.

Allan Paule · 18 years ago

Get your specs right yuga! the 2133 1.2 / Vista basic is actually 29,995 not 24,995.

o2y · 18 years ago

hayyy why did hp bundled it with vista??? sayang :(

jangelo · 18 years ago

@hootie2t I believe Acer will be announcing its HDD model Aspire one come August. By that time, the Dell E series would’ve already been launched.

The big issue with the 8GB Aspire one really is the slow SSD write (or even read) speed when using OSes other than the bundled Linpux Linux lite.

Also, news has it that HP is planning a cheaper Mini note. While that may take some time, it might still be worth the wait.

hootie2t · 18 years ago

Where do we get the upgrade for the 80GB Hard Drive for the Acer Aspire One?

All stores I’ve been don’t seem to know about that whenever I ask about it. Been to PC Corner, Villman, and several others along Gilmore.

Please help, Yuga.

katexter · 18 years ago

Go for the MSI Wind!

It works with Mac OS X Leopard. Check out my writeup about it: http://katext.com/katexter/blog/264/

Lucien Dominick G. Tiojanco · 18 years ago

UMPC Boy: VIA’s recently released Nano processors are actually based on VIA’s Isaiah architecture and provides 2-4 times the performance of similarly clocked C7-M processors without while maintaining the same power envelope.

The 1.0/1.2 Ghz Via Nano processor would have been a better alternative to the underpowered 1.2/1.6 Ghz C7-M processor HP decided to go with specially if they also replaced the current chipset with the VIA VX800 to reduce power consumption without affecting performance.

I also wish they’d quit putting Windows Vista on these things and instead just give Linux (Preferrably an XFCE or Gnome based distro) and Windows XP Home as choices on ALL variants.

umpc boy · 18 years ago

hp clearly lost for taking in the VIA processor. it’s really slow with that bundled Vista OS. I would guess they have to release another one once VIA Isaiah comes out to catch up. or they could simply join the Intel bandwagon.

Lucien Dominick G. Tiojanco · 18 years ago

If only HP decided to go with a VIA Nano 1.2 Ghz processor + VX800 chipset… And either an opensource friendly WiFi chip or Windows XP as it’s O.S.

Better performance + lower power consumption than an Intel Atom + Intel 945 chipset. :-)

Jan Alvin · 18 years ago

Ang lalaki naman niyan.

BrianB · 18 years ago

Here are the specs of Dell E series:

http://www.pmptoday.com/2008/07/22/dell-e-configuration-of-mini-notebooks/

BrianB · 18 years ago

I’ll wait for the Dell. They usually have better glossy screens than Acer. Xbrite!

jangelo · 18 years ago

The mobile Celeron M may be a gas-guzzler compared to the Intel Atom, but among the models you listed, the Asus EeePC 900 comes out with the longest battery life, when you compare them using the packaged battery packs (3-cell pack for the Aspire one and WIND, 4-cell for the Mini note and EeePC).

In my tests, I got 3.5 hours on my EeePC 900. Reportedly, the Aspire one gives 2.5 to 3 hours, while the Wind only 2.5 hours. The Mini note, meanwhile maxes out at 2 to 2.5 hours.

You can buy batteries separately, but that will add to the cost. And batteries might not be locally available (yet?).

Also, I believe the Aspire one does not come with a “true” SSD but rather a Flash-based drive, which makes it run very very slow on some OSes, like Windows XP. Better wait for the HDD version if you intend to install a full-fledged OS here.

At any rate, I was really rooting for the EeePC 901–great 9-inch form factor and impressive battery life (7-8 hours with the bundled 6-cell battery pack). Sadly, Asus Phils chose to forego that model (for the time being?) and instead launch the 1000 locally. Perhaps they feel they need to move the EeePC 900 models first.

Dusty · 18 years ago

I wonder if we can install the InstantOn OS on any of these with ease. That would be a huge factor considering you can be up and running and browsing this blog within 10 seconds from a cold startup.