New Tests: Netbook Round-Up

Today, five netbooks have joined our Product Survey, including new offerings from established manufacturers and debuts from suppliers who just can't resist jumping on the netbook bandwagon.

First up is the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Mini, whose stylish good looks match the rest of its product line.  It's joined by Dell's Inspiron Mini 9, another more traditional manufacturer trying its hand at netbooks.  The third computer giant to have a go is Toshiba, whose NB100 comes in two versions--an 80 GB/512 MB RAM Linux model and a 120 GB/1 GB RAM model running Windows XP.

As well as these three netbooks, we've added two new netbooks that are minor updates to existing netbooks: the Asus 1002HA, which will arrive in January 2009, and the Hercules eCAFE EC900, a larger, refreshed version of the EC800.

These five new netbooks have caused us to look again at some of the models we've tested already.  In particular, we've made the following modifications:

• We've increased the score of the Samsung NC10 from four stars to five stars.  We had docked it one star for having a very small touchpad, but now that we've had a chance to compare it to a lot more netbooks, we realize that it's not alone in this fault.  Furthermore, while it does mean make one more thing to carry around, the weight of a USB mouse is hardly a crushing blow to portability ...

• The Wind U100 has also been updated, following a revision from MSI with new components.

> Product Survey: Netbooks

> Buyer's Guides: Our Pick of The Best Products