Elonex One t+ netbook gets the hands-on treatment

Elonex' One t and slightly upgraded t+ netbooks are certainly an improvement over the original Elonex One but, as Plug In Blog's hands-on of the device shows, it still falls somewhat uncomfortably between the OLPC and a regular netbook. That said, for the £99 price tag (or less than $200), the site seems to think that the netbook will get the done job for its target audience: students, and even anyone else that's not looking to do much more than email and some basic web browsing. Anyone needing more than that, however, had best look elsewhere, especially considering that the netbook's underpowered and uncommon Ingenic XBurst processor will likely limit your software options beyond anything that doesn't come pre-installed.

[Christy McGrory @ Oct 7th 2008 11:44AM]

Ok, what the HELL is this AOL thing that randomly popped up on my screen when i'm trying to read an article. Seriously? when was this implemented? Oh I see, the little 'AIM' logo next to where i'm typing. Engadget, why? WHY?

[schmitty338 @ Oct 7th 2008 11:52AM]

Ummmm....AOL owns weblogs (and therefore Engadget), so if they want to add an AOL ad, they can, and I doubt any bitching from engadget would do any good.

[Lobito @ Oct 7th 2008 12:37PM]

Firefox does not show any pop-ups.

[Christy McGrory @ Oct 7th 2008 5:21PM]

Thanyou for informing me.

[Dee @ Oct 7th 2008 11:52AM]

XBurst processor is the Cyrix processor of this generation.

[John Stracke @ Oct 7th 2008 2:16PM]

No, Cyrix was x86. XBurst is MIPS-based (or a clone, or something).

[tanooki2003 @ Oct 7th 2008 2:47PM]

The XBurst CPU is a MIPS based MPU. It is powerful enough to do simple tasks that a standard handheld PDA can do. This is NOT to be compared with any of the X86 CPU's such as the Atom, C3, C7, Nano..etc. If you are looking for something more powerful than your typical average today's mid to high end PDA than you had better look elsewhere because this will gravely disappoint.

[Benson @ Oct 7th 2008 7:17PM]

If it's MIPS, that explains the Linux port. I was wondering why they ported it themselves, but I guess they didn't.

Anyway, any open-source Linux software you feel like running on the hardware specs should be doable; porting most stuff to a different arch is not hard. That includes xmodmap (if it's not there), fixing the reviewer's touchpad complaint... and a lot of stuff will even be copyable from other MIPS distributions (which are indeed mainly for handhelds, but should have xmodmap).

[kenneth moestrup @ Oct 7th 2008 12:25PM]

That's a large bezel, but pricewise within the frame.

[Dead_Rebel @ Oct 7th 2008 12:46PM]

@ Lobito

Firefox does show the scrolling AOL add that Christy is talking about. You're just fortunate enough to have not seen it yet. It's a java/flash side-over.

[paul @ Oct 7th 2008 1:11PM]

all i see is an eee in the background... .the original netbook!!!!!
long life the 701!

[1234321 @ Oct 7th 2008 3:35PM]

engadget please, these aren't netbooks, they are giant pdas aka Foleo knockoffs

[Benson @ Oct 7th 2008 7:19PM]

Well, if they're Foleo knockoffs, they're one of those one-up knockoffs, because while they only have the power of a PDA, they don't require _another_ PDA to run.

[AlphaTeam @ Oct 7th 2008 3:59PM]

What's up with the green hinge? Does spending $200 on a computer get you diseased too?

[OVerclockerX @ Oct 7th 2008 6:32PM]

Ideal for the target market, Students.... Umm Right.

So students don't need to type up any assignments do they?

[AaronSoup @ Oct 7th 2008 8:13PM]

I was actually going to buy one of these the other day... Read into it and realised that it basically has the same processor (slightly inferior in fact) that my old HTC phone from 2005 had....

Still, they deserve praise for actually getting a functioning netbook in at under $200... If they could get the clock speed up to 600mhz or so and add a 3g sim card slot they could show HTC up as the money grabbing whores they are... they're still selling the Athena (T-Mobile Ameo/Dopod U1000) for around $1000, which runs on a Intel 624mhz MIPS-type processor....

[paul @ Oct 9th 2008 2:10PM]

all i see is an eee in the background... .the original netbook!!!!!
long life the 701!

[jaytur1 @ Dec 29th 2008 7:09AM]

It's a nice little machine, the only drawbacks are; no GNOME or KDE, no Wine, can't upgrade firefox