Quote:
Originally Posted by Fiona Gatt VIA
"Looks better than the EEE PC if you ask me."
Both units run open source software. The Cloudbook features a card reader and DVI out. More importantly I think for most people, it has a 30GB hard drive where as the Eee PC only has 4-8GB flash storage. This provides much greater scope for using it offline. The whole concept of the Eee PC is that it is to be used as an always-connected device, with storage of files online. I think a lot of people are not quite ready for that inevitable step yet.
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The hard disk brings with it consequences. While it expands it's offline capabilities, it causes latencies, etc. in disk access, where one would end up not seeing this with the eeePC.
Furthermore, for most of what you're going to use these classes of devices, I've found with my Nokia N800, that while it's nice to have something like 30Gb of capacity, you don't need anywhere near as much- something on the order of 4-16Gb (I've 8 in the form of two SDHC's, one booted off of, one as data store...) is more than sufficient- and I only need the space I've got because I'm trying to pimp mine out as a security audit device as well as a largish PDA. These things are NOT a laptop replacement, they're a new class of machine and, as such, people need to quit trying to place them into spaces they don't belong. Putting a 30Gb hard disk in it is getting into that sort of space, I think.
I've had the good fortune to play with an eeePC recently and it's snappy and the stuff you'd expect to do with it will comfortably fit on the on-board and if you need to do something else you can pretty much expand it to 16 extra Gb with the SDHC slot. Having said this, is the Cloudbook a better deal? Very probably. Several people online have commented about issues of being perceived to be "slower" because it takes longer to boot, it takes some time to load up apps when compared to the eeePC. It's not in muscle that it's slower. At least on paper, the Cloudbook's much, much more capable for the same power consumption. The hard disk drags it down in some ways, I think. I'm conducting some experiments with an older laptop to see if a true UltraDMA CF card will cause the laptop to behave more like an eeePC in performance (and it DOES perform surprisingly well...). If so, it's something for Everex to consider (yes, it'll raise the price a bit, but...) and for end users to contemplate as an upgrade path for the Cloudbook.
As it stands, I am keenly waiting for a budget window to get my hands on one of them myself.
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