ECS G10IL: Stateside September for $399

ECS has been teasing the netbook market for months now with its G10IL -- meticulously surveying the competition and batting its eyelashes at US consumers. Fortunately, LAPTOP was able to sit down with Henry Kwan of ECS to help bring the flirtatious cycle to a satisfying end. Accordingly, we now know that the G10IL will ship in 8.9- and 10-inch models with the latter most likely shipping to US soils. It'll be available at an entry-level price of $399 in September running Linpus Lite 9.4 Linux off an 8GB SSD. It'll also be configurable with XP on an 80GB disk and EDGE/HSDPA/HSUPA data for much more. No sentimental delusions of educating the world's children here, the G10IL is meant for serious business use only. How refreshingly direct ECS.

[ChocoSnake @ Jul 9th 2008 4:48AM]

Great, I wanted to get an MSI Wind, but now here's another reason to wait and see what might beat the competition. I mean shoot, doesn't that picture look slick?

[rektide @ Jul 9th 2008 5:50AM]

The Wind uses Via's C7m processor, which has been around for quite a while (since May 2005). Atom will knock the socks off it, performance and performance/watt wise (encryption tasks aside). On the other hand, Via's new Nano/Isaih processor should be landing soon and should completely wreck Atom on the performance and performance/watt measures. But, imo, the Wind is a dud for using such a poor processor (it was slow way back in 2005).

[Peter @ Jul 9th 2008 5:59AM]

MSI Wind uses the Atom CPU according to all others in the world, so you are wrong.

[OneLove @ Jul 9th 2008 12:22PM]

My company is looking to buy 400+ lappys with these specs: touchscreen, long battery life, mobile broadband, portability (light). Anyone got any ideas. The ECS comes close but no touchscreen. Panasonics are too expensive.

[iofthestorm @ Jul 9th 2008 2:11PM]

@OneLove: If you're a company, I'd really suggest not skimping and getting one of these "netbooks" as I can almost guarantee not all 400 people will like these. But the best reasonably priced tablet is the HP tx2500z, it's even decent at gaming. On the other hand, it does get a little hot and battery life isn't great even with the 8 cell battery, so I think you might want to go with Thinkpad tablets instead, although those will cost you a fair bit more.

[Sheepman @ Jul 9th 2008 4:51AM]

...yay!

[nebulus @ Jul 9th 2008 5:04AM]

Is it just me or is anyone else getting a stormtrooper vibe off that design??

[initialxy @ Jul 9th 2008 7:29AM]

yes, all left to do is to get a stormstrooper to present it, instead of hot asian chicks.

[Zeek @ Jul 9th 2008 11:25AM]

I think robo-Bjork would screw it.

[^ @ Jul 9th 2008 5:07AM]

NICE

[^ @ Jul 9th 2008 5:35AM]

dame, my avater didnt appair,
once again engadgets dated comment system fails

[rektide @ Jul 9th 2008 5:46AM]

Its showing now. My main gripe is that you can hit reload and engadget will give you a different view of the comments every single time. I've seen plenty of people post stuff 2-5 times because its so inconsistent. Your avatar is likely a similar deferred update issue.

[OneLove @ Jul 9th 2008 12:25PM]

That happened to me this morning. no avatar, reload, reload, avatar. The comment system seems like it is caching page views or something. you hit back and reload and it doesn't update right away.

[rektide @ Jul 9th 2008 5:45AM]

Atom based, havent seen word on official ram capacity but it has one slot. Three USB slots. 1.3 MP cam. 3G only on the 11" model. Bluetooth. I still havent seen word on my favorite spec: display/screen resolution.

[John @ Jul 9th 2008 6:09AM]

The ECS G10IL was suppose to be released in April, then they turned it into May, then June, July and now September!!!

Looking at the tech, I would love to buy 5 for my company, specially the 10inch with SSD and 3G.

But they keep on delaying it! By the time it really is released, there will be a lot of competition!

[Major4Play @ Jul 9th 2008 6:26AM]

Looks quite nice but has anyone ever bought an ECS motherboard or base mini system ? quality they certainly are not !

[Kevin @ Jul 9th 2008 1:16PM]

yeah. my first self-build was an ECS... I was probably 14 and have a fear of ECS along with every other hobby self-builder I know. Looks fantastic, I wish the ASUS brand was on it, or MSI, or Gigabyte... I'm sort of scared about how good it looks and how much I am afraid of ECS. "It's a trap!"

[alanwestenbroek @ Jul 9th 2008 6:30AM]

Can they really not come up with a better name for that Linux distribution?

[neofolklore @ Jul 9th 2008 7:12AM]

so basically, its a phone. just twice as large as the latest nokia builds.

[iptydafu @ Jul 9th 2008 8:07AM]

So if you type hard or rest your palms on it at all, the screen's going to lever off the computer and go to a 90-degree angle?

[deva @ Jul 9th 2008 8:35AM]

now *THAT* looks like MY kind of netbook!

[Superevil @ Jul 9th 2008 8:58AM]

Wow initialxy, you really are a true nerd.

[PS3guy @ Jul 9th 2008 10:06AM]

My 17 inch Alienware Laptop would destroy this lol

[jsb @ Jul 9th 2008 5:17PM]

You mean destroy your back?

[Ron @ Jul 9th 2008 10:19AM]

I will never buy another laptop from ECS. My ECS G732 was nothing but a design disaster. The "desktop replacement" featured a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 desktop processor. Even with a fan that sounded like a dust-buster vacuum cleaner, the computer ran hotter than hell. My power jack melted in less than a year, I went through at least 5 sticks of RAM in 2.5 years, and my hard drive died after 2.5 years. An under-the-laptop cooling device was of little help. It stopped being my primary laptop after 4 months, with only minor usage after. My college roommates urged me to turn the thing off when I left the room for even the shortest length of time because of the perceived fire hazard. The laptop's microphone was cleverly placed - so close to the speakers that turning the mic on under even very low speaker volume resulted in pitchy feedback. Battery degradation was also far worse than my Toshiba laptop, probably because ECS probably used cheaper than dirt batteries to drive cost down. Maybe ECS changed its tune, fired its designers and thermal engineers, and brought up quality control since then, but it's a gamble not worth taking (for any amount of money). If you're after a low priced mini-laptop, go with a quality name. You WILL thank yourself. Sorry for the rant, but I don't want to see anybody else get nailed by ECS.

[chb @ Jul 9th 2008 10:41AM]

I was thinking Space 1999 when I first saw it, but then it struck me, 2001: A space odyssey

[bazzz @ Jul 9th 2008 11:21AM]

Anyone read whether it'll have a display with LED backlight? I mean this is probably the perfect machine for mobile use (with 3G), it'll better have a very bright display (like the Aspire One which also has LED backlight...)

[chb @ Jul 9th 2008 11:34AM]

I was thinking SPACE 1999 when I first saw it, but then it struck me 2010 Space Odyssey

[ISlaptops @ Jul 10th 2008 6:38PM]

From what I have seen on the G10IL, it has 1 slot for RAM safely up to 1GB, but I'm sure someone will try to put in a 2 GB RAM and test it once it's released.

Also, I noticed that many of you have reservations on buying ECS laptops. If some of you don't know, ECS bought out a company called Uniwill. Uniwill is actually in charge of making all new ECS laptops. The quality you have seen before is totally different from the older generation ECS notebooks.

I for one love the design on this G10!!! It's gonna be the perfect size for use with my DJ equipment and yet still has great features to do some work at my local starbucks! Can't Wait!