Acer Joings the Growing Inexpensive UMPC Market
Acer appears to be the latest company to announce a new UMPC, according to ZDNet. While very few details are known about their new UMPC, which will be available later this year, what we do know is that it will have a 7 or 9 inch screen and a price tag of about $470. In other words, it is meant to directly compete with the Eee PC. Although what operating system it will run is not known, Linux seems likely, since XP will be almost gone by the time it is available and, considering the price tag, putting Vista on it looks difficult.
Another thing that is interesting to note is that Acer previously said they would not get into this market, but after seeing the success of Asus, they changed their minds. To me, this says that this inexpensive laptop-like UMPC market will continue to expand or else Acer would not bother to get into the market at all.
As this market is expanding, all the competitors so far run Linux. (Note: I am not talking about UMPCs, but rather about inexpensive laptop-like UMPCs.) It will be very interesting to see if and when a product is announced that will fit this category and run Windows. When a good Windows product in this market comes out, do you think everyone will flock to it or will they keep buying the Linux ones? My guess is that unless Microsoft practically gives away Windows and Office, people will largely stick to Linux.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I think this end of the market is going to explode too. And more importantly, among the “Joe Sixpack” end of the market that don’t care what is on the computer so long as it plays music and video and surfs the net.
People who buy off the shelf systems are used to having everything set up and ready to go, so there will be nothing new there. The nice surprise they will get is when they find their computer is not slowing down with all the garbage that installs on a Windows box with the help of uneducated users.
If the bottom end of the market begins to expect Linux levels of performance and stability, then Windows will get a much rougher ride when it comes time to upgrade to something more powerful.
February 17th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Another great thing with these Linux-based UMPCs - they all run OpenOffice. As they catch on among business users, and are found to meet their needs, businesses will be hard pressed to justify Microsoft Office on their desktops.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Cheap WXP UMPC is a reality. Everex sells the Cloudbook in Europe with WXP under its Packard Bell brand. I own a US Cloudbook and after the Linux distro that it came with crashed, I installed WXP and it runs nicely. The WXP drivers are downloadable from the Everex site.