Just a quick roundup of several stories from the past week or so, related to netbooks.
MSI has released a new BIOS for the MSI Wind. It’s version 1.0A and is supposed to fix the S4 Sleep Mode problem that some had encountered (download here) (via Liliputing).
Even in light of some thinking that flash-based Solid State Drive usage will go down in 2009, The Future of Things is proclaiming 2009 to be the “SSD Year of Revolution”. They discuss the impact of Intel entering the SSD market as well as the SLC vs MLC issues and how SSDs are pushing the limits of the Serial ATA II (SATA II) interface.
On the Linux front, Liliputing mentioned that Eeebuntu 8.10 has been released. Eeebuntu is exactly what it sounds like – a distribution designed to support most of the Asus Eee PC family with little to no configuration on the user’s end. They also mention XEPC (SourceForge page) which is a project for an updated Xandros Linux distribution (that shipped with some of the Eee PCs), or rather to update the distribtion that came with those Eee PCs.
The Inquirer is reporting that Computex 2009 is on track to be the biggest Computex yet, with more companies paying for exhibits than last year, and up to 40,000 visitors from overseas. Part of that is due to flights from mainland China allowing for more participation, but more importantly, they believe that netbooks will be the driving force, with Taiwan being considered the center of the netbook universe.
Finally, The Economist has a small guide to choosing netbooks, along with some very positive commentary on netbooks in general and their place in the computing world.
Concerning SSDs, I think many users of SSD-based netbooks are disappointed by the performance of cheap SSDs included on them. But on the other hand, SSDs such as the ones used in high-end ultraportables give a much higher performance and I think they have a brighter future. So:
cheap SSDs in netbooks > low performance > down
expensive SSDs in ultraportables > high performance > up
Just my 2 cents.