British system builder Elonex has come up with further details regarding its upcoming Elonex One educational sub-notebook that will compete with archrival Eee PC. Following the idea that "it's all in the looks", the British system builder will release its educational notebook in a wide range of colors, including black, pink, green, white, and silver.

The Elonex One is touted as a sub-$150 mobile computing system, but, despite its extremely low price, you should think twice before enrolling yourself on the waiting list. The sub-notebook is not only cheaper than the famous Eee PC from Asustek, but it's also way less powerful. The One comes with the same 7-inch LCD screen that is the thumb rule in the cheap Linux UMPC world, and it can work at a maximum resolution of 800x480.

Under the colorful hood, the components are less than modest. The system comes with just 128MB of DDR 2 RAM and a 300MHz CPU, a custom order from LNX, and despite the fact that it draws a small amount of power, it's a major regress from the Eee's 630MHz Celeron. While the Eee can run Windows XP or even stripped-down version of Vista, these operating systems are out of discussion when it comes to Elonex.

More than that, the One comes with a single gigabyte of solid-state storage, which does not allow the user to install a minimum set of software applications. However, the connectivity options get better: the One is equipped with a 10/100 Ethernet NIC and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi chip onboard.

The notebook' battery is estimated to deliver four hours of autonomy. The keyboard is a reduced-size QWERTY layout that features a splash-proof membrane for the rare occasions you decide to let your laptop have some Coke. The membrane can be detached for cleaning.

The $150 Linux-based notebook may be a bargain if you plan on making heavy use of online applications, such as Google Docs, for instance. The bad part is that the computer will enter limited manufacturing and there's no chance the company will release more than 200,000 units.