Dot Com Note

At last it is confirmed. Asus Eee PC 900 will be on sale in the USA starting on May 12. If you don’t know what an Eee PC is, this Wikipedia entry will help you know every thing you ever wanted to know about Eee PC.

The earlier Eee pcs (the 700 series) had 7 inch display. This new 900 series Eee PCs will boast a 9 inch screen size and a price tag of $549. If you can perform your computing chores under Linux, you will be rewarded with a 20GB of flash storage. If you prefer Windows XP, you have to live with 12GB of solid state memory.

Picture credit http://gizmodo.com/381768/asus-eee-pc-900-hits-us-may-12-for-549

What is so exciting about Eee PC? Being a 2lb sub-notebook, it is the cheapest in its class. The runaway success of Eee PC has created a new market segment for this low cost, ultra light notebooks. Other PC makers are racing to enter this newly created market with their own offerings.

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Image credit: engadget

Amazon has launched an ebook reader called Kindle. Here is a Newsweek article about this latest gizmo that Amazon is positioning as a service rather than a device.

Unlike Sony’s eReader, Amazon’s Kindle will have wireless Interent connectivity using the cell phone data transmission technology.

Kindle has a six-inch screen and it uses e-ink for sharp readable pages. The battery lasts for 30 hours and you can fully recharge it in two hours. With a weight of around 10.3 ounces, it will be easy to carry it around in your backpack.

You will be able to go to Amazon site and download ebooks and reviews from there. You can also subscribe to newspapers and magazines and download them to the reader.

One interesting thing mentioned in the Newsweek article is about blog subscriptions. For $1.99 a month, you will be able to subscribe to one blog from some type of Amazon’s blog subscription service.

Back in September, Engadget had posted two pictures of this device. To me, it really looks ugly. I don’t know if it has a color screen or not. Without a color screen, I am sorry, I can’t use it.

And who is going to pay $1.99 a month for a blog subscription? I will not be paying $1.99 a month to read a blog.

A blog should be available for free. However, if Amazon bundles unlimited blog subscriptions via full RSS feeds for $1.99, it may be an attractive deal for me.