UMPCs to Storm the Market: Press F1 for Help

Asustek's Eee PC has started a real revolution in the UMPC sector. Initially perceived as a niche market, UMPCs would appeal to business people and would act more like a sophisticated personal organizer. Asustek took their size, shrunk it more, then mix it with an eye-candy case and a free colorful operating system. This was the recipe for the sub-notebook's mass adoption.

Eee PC's popularity rapidly attracted some other companies willing to post profit in the blink of an eye. Several of them have even announced that they would release products especially designed to compete with the Eee. One of them is Everex's Cloudbook, but the newest "offender" on the market is a replica of the Eee, sold by Cybertron PC.

The Cybertron PC looks and feels exactly like the Eee sub-notebook. It has the same size, shape and weight that made the Eee industry's sweetheart. Moreover, the "impostor" comes with the same 7-inch LCD display that can offer a maximum resolution of 800x600. The only remarkable difference is in the CPU. The Eee is powered by a Celeron M 353 Mobile CPU, that is underclocked to 630 Mhz, while the Cybertron PC comes with a standard clock of 900MHz and only 2GB of NAND flash storage.

The Cybertron mini-computer sells for $349, exactly the price of an Asustek Eee. Unfortunately for the clone, the user can buy a 4GB version of Eee for the same money, so the Cybertron Mini-PC isn't cheap enough to raise any problems.

On the other side of the fence, MSI is cooking another UMPC to compete with the upcoming version of the Eee that features a 10-inch display. MSI originally planned to produce a low-cost, 7-inch notebook, but it decided that the 7-incher was already old news for the market. Asus, Acer, Gigabyte and more other PC vendors will release their version of sub-notebooks based on Intel's Shelton 08 platform, so MSI planned to up the ante in terms of technical specifications.

The 10-inch computer from MSI will not increase the notebook's capabilities, but also the overall manufacturing costs. If Asustek releases the promised 10-inch notebook, then MSI will have to face some serious competition.