Everex Dreams Upon 9-Inch Version of Cloudbook UMPC

It is still arguable whether Everex will release its first $399 ultra-portable CloudBook until January or not, but it is for sure that the PC manufacturing is munching on the idea of releasing a 9-inched successor later this year. Everex is following closely into Asustek's footsteps, but the ultra-mobile PC market sector tends to become more and more inaccessible to the newcomers.

The regular version of the Cloudbook UMPC is scheduled for availability on January the 25th for as much as $399. it will sport a 7-inch LCD, 1.2 GHz ultra-low-voltage Via processor, 512MB RAM, 30GB hard drive and will run gOS, an Ubuntu Linux derivative. The company expects to sell about 20,000 CloudBook units during the first quarter alone. Although this may sound promising, the main rival of the CloudBook laptop, the Eee sold more than 350,000 units in just three months.

Moreover, Asus is ready to release the second version of Eee, that features larger, 8 and 9-inch LCD displays, built-in WiMax connectivity as well as the optional Windows XP operating system. Asus roughly estimates that it will manage to sell about 5 million units during this year, so tight competition is expected.

Everex decided that they want a 9-inch Cloudbook, too, and slated its availability for June 2008. Another significant improvement (and the only think that would differentiate the Eee copycat) will be the availability of multi-color skins for the sub-notebook.

Since the most significant drawback in an ultra-mobile computer is the small keyboard, the larger Cloudbook will feature bigger keycaps for easy and comfortable typing. One single aspect that will remain unchanged in the new version of the Cloudbook will be the operating system. It will come with the gOS Linux distribution, maintained by the 22-year David Liu.