You know that unidentified netbook that our friend Sascha spotted at CeBIT last week? It turns out it’s been identified. It looks like this slim netbook is the Taiwan Mobile W101 we heard about last week.
The Taiwanese wireless carrier is selling the W101 for 180 Euros when you sign up for a 36 month 3G wireless broadband contract. The machine has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 512MB of RAM, an 8GB solid state disk, and an integrated UMTS modem. While the version on display at CeBIT was running Linpus Linux Lite, it looks like the Taiwan Mobile version will run Windows XP.
I suspect we’ll see an identical netbook sold under a different brand name in the not too distant future, possibly with Linpus for its operating system. The computer itself is made by Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta. And the version on display at CeBIT had a Vodafone sticker on it.
Is there Linux driver support for the typically installed internal 3G modules (I know there is for most USB sticks), or is the seemingly universal choice of XP entirely political?