14 DAY TRIAL // Everex's CloudBook PC seems to have arrived on the market already, but it's not to be found if you're not that important to get a sample. The only online shop that is currently selling the green sub-notebook is ZaReason, that had them in stock since Friday morning.
"ZaReason sent a van over the other day and grabbed their units while the Wal-Mart pallets were being loaded," claimed Paul Kim, U.S. head of marketing at Everex. It seems that people get along with one another better over short distances; Everex's U.S. headquarters are located in Fremont, 45 kilometers from ZaReason's Berkeley offices. According to some reports on the ZaReason website, the company was able to be the first to get its hands on the CloudBook units in a much interesting manner than Kim would admit.
WalMart will get its first units of the Cloudbook ultra-mobile PC on February the 21st. The date lead to some confusion, as many websites thought that the time WalMart will get its units coincides with the official launch date. It's wrong, because WalMart is simply late. Kim claimed that NewEgg will add Everex's newest product to their list in the first week of March. This is quite late, and I strongly doubt that the delay is caused by NewEgg.
TigerDirect won't get any units of the much-awaited sub-notebook. This is quite unclear whether the ban will include CompUSA's stores or not although Kim claims that, once recovered from bankruptcy, the stores could make a channel for Everex's products. The company is also reported to be in negotiation with "two other major retailers", but as for the moment of writing, they have not reached an agreement over the financial terms.
Although the Cloudbook is gearing up to storm the UMPC market, it seems that it has enough flaws to stumble upon its own feet. At the moment, the CloudBook PC is not much of a threat to Asustek's small and eye-candy Eee PC sub-notebook, given the fact that it has some problems with the Linux-based interface, as well as with the built-in wireless connectivity.