Mwave is continuing to clear out its inventory of 8.9 inch Asus netbooks. You can pick up a refurbished Eee PC 900A with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 4GB SSD, 4 cell battery, and Xandros Linux for $165 including free shipping.

If you need more storage, the Eee PC 900 with a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 20GB solid state disk and Xandros Linux is going for $190.

For $180, you can pick up an Eee PC 900 running Windows XP. This model has 1GB of RAM and a 12 GB solid state disk.

All three models are refurbished and come with 3 month warranties. They also all have 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel displays, 4 cell batteries, and 802.11b/g WiFi.

Or if you’d rather pick up a cheap Windows PC,

If that refurbished Eee PC 900A I mentioned a few hours ago isn’t doing it for you, here’s a slightly different option. For $190 you can pick up a refurbished Asus Eee PC 900 from Mwave. It has an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor, Windows XP, and 12GB of flash storage.

While this model doesn’t have the newer low power Intel Atom CPU, the Intel Celeron CPU actually performs at least as well on most tasks and better on some. It’s worth pointing out that 12GB solid state disk is actually two separate disks, a 4GB and an 8GB disk. One is designed to hold the operating system while the other provides additional storage.

Besides running Windows XP and having additional storage, there’s one more thing that sets this deal apart from the earlier deal: It doesn’t end today. You should be able to purchase the refurbished Eee PC 900 at this price until Mwave runs out of stock.

via Little Laptop Deals

The OLPC XO Laptop was designed for use in developing nations. The computer gets excellent battery life, which makes it ideal for use in locations with limited access to electricity. And it has a unique interface designed to make the laptops simple to use for children that have had little to no exposure to computers. But if you take a bunch of computer savvy users and ask them to perform a simple list of tasks on an XO Laptop and on more conventional laptops like the Asus Eee PC or Intel Classmate PC, the XO is probably going to lose 9 times out of 10.

And that’s exactly what Computer Aid International found when the group decided to conduct a test with a series of computers to determine which machines were best suited for deployment in developing areas of Africa. The group asked the folks at ZDNet UK to run a few tests on a few computers including an Asus Eee PC 900, Intel Classmate PC, and XO Laptop. Then the computers were shipped off to several African universities for field testing. (In one case, the reviewers were looking at an Asus Eee PC 701).

The results? The OLPC got better battery life than any other machine, but it was considered by most to be too slow and it couldn’t easily perform tasks like editing spreadsheets of watching video.  So most reviewers preferred the Eee PC, which scored higher than even the Classmate PC due to better battery life.

But the methodology seems a bit off to me. The OLPC XO Laptop wasn’t designed as a productivity machine for use in a college setting. It’s meant to be an educational tool for young children and it has a unique interface designed to help children learn to use computers, interact with their peers, learn to write programs, and perform other simple tasks. Sure, it doesn’t come with a spreadsheet application or video player, but as an open source computer you could install those if you wanted to. But it seems wrong to test the XO on its ability to perform tasks it wasn’t designed for — and which may not really be required. After all, how many spreadsheets did you fill out when you were 10 years old?

You can download the complete Computer Aid International report as a PDF.

via Tech Radar

Sure, it’s not hard to find a netbook with a 10 inch screen, 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and Windows XP for under $350. But what can you get if you’ve just got $150 burning a hole in yoru pocket? How about a netbook that was top of the line about 12 months ago?

Woot is offering refurbished Asus Eee PC 900 netbooks today. If you’re not familiar with Woot, the site offers one item for sale each day. In other words, if you don’t buy it today, it’ll be gone by tomorrow.

The Eee PC 900 has a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor, an 8.9 inch 1024 x 600 pixel display, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of flash storage. It runs a custom version of Xandros Linux, although it’s perfectly capable of running Windows XP if you happen to have a installation disk handy. It’s not exactly bleeding edge technology. But it is cheap.

thanks Jeremy!

Is that $250 Eee PC 901 still too expensive for you? No worries, we’ve got an even cheaper Asus netbook for you.

Asus may have moved on to bigger and better things (like larger keyboards and Intel Atom processors) since launching the Eee PC 900 in the spring of 2008. But there must still be some Eee PC 900 units floating around, because just a few days after Woot offered a $180 deal on this early generation netbook, Buy.com is offering refurbished units at the same price, with free shipping included.

The Eee PC 900 has an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 900MHz Intel Celeron processor. This particular model has a 4GB solid state disk, 512MB of RAM, and runs Xandros Linux. It’s capable of running Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu, or other Linux distributions, but you’ll have to install them yourself.

The Buy.com product page seems to have a picture of an Eee PC 701 with a larger bezel around the screen, but the product description is clearly for an Eee PC 900 with a larger display, higher resolution display. If you have any doubts you might want to contact Buy.com before placing your order.

You can read more about the Asus Eee PC 900 in the Liliputing Product Database.

Sellout.Woot is offering the Asus Eee PC 900 for $180 plus $5 shipping today only. Sellout.Woot is a partnership between Woot and Yahoo! shopping. They offer one deal a day, and in about 16 hours, this deal will be over.

The Asus Eee PC 900 isn’t exactly a top of the line model. It was released about a year ago, and has an 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 900MHz Intel Celeron procesor. It has a 4Gb solid state disk and 512MB of RAM, and 802.11b/g WiFi. This particular model runs Linux, but it’s capable of running Windows XP as well. And the price is certainly right.

You can read more about the Eee PC 900 in the Liliputing Product Database.

We’ve already seen that early builds of Windows 7 run pretty smoothly on netbooks with 1.6GHz Intel Atom processors including the MSI Wind U100, Asus Eee PC 1000H, and others. But what about an older machine like the Asus Eee PC 900 which sports a 900MHz Intel Celeron CPU?

It turns out Windows 7 runs reasonably well on the  Eee PC 900 too. Blogger multimolti has even put together a tutorial explaining how to install Windows 7 on an Eee PC 900 using a USB flash drive (in case you don’t have a USB DVD drive).

While Windows 7 will run on this machine, it’s worth noting that the Eee PC 900 doesn’t seem to be capable of handling the Aero graphic interface. Of course, the computer probably runs faster with Aero shut off anyway, but it’s always fun to install eye candy just to impress your friends for a few minutes before you decide you actually need to be productive and turn off the unecessary graphics features.

You can check out a video of Windows 7 in action on the Eee PC 900 after the break.

via Blogeee
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In order to charge most netbook batteries you have to make sure they’re inserted firmly in your computer and that the laptop is plugged into a wall socket. So if you have a spare battery, there’s no way to charge it up while you’re out and about using your netbook — unless you buy a spare battery charger.

A few months ago Expansys began selling clip-on chargers for the Asus Eee PC 701, 900, and 901 at relatively high prices. Now at least two stores are offering somewhat cheaper, if bulkier chargers for use with Eee PC 701 or 900 batteries.

• Premium Batteries chargers
• GPS for Less chargers

Like the clip-on chargers, these units need to be used with the main power supplythat comes with your netbook. In other words, you can’t charge two batteries at once unless you already have an extra power adapter.

These chargers are designed to work with standard or high capacity Eee PC batteries, and prices start at about $16 US.

via Eee PC.net

Amazon’s annual “Customers Vote” holiday promotion is under way. Here’s how it works. You visit the Customers Vote page and look at 6 sets of three potential deals. Pick the deal that you’d be most likely to purchase, and if your bargain wins, Amazon will offer a limited quantity of that item at that price.

In previous years, this promotion has led to Amazon’s servers getting hammered and items selling out while customers were still hitting their browser refresh buttons. So Amazon has settled on a plan where the company will email some people who participated in the voting round to let them participate in the buying round which starts on Thanksgiving. In other words, there’s no guarantees that you’ll be able to pick up the items at the listed prices even if you vote for the winners.

Now, what kind of discounts are we talking about here? Pretty major ones. For example, there’s a Sony Blu-Ray player that normally sells for $299 that could go for just $99. Probably one of the most exciting offers is for a $129 Asus Eee PC 900. Sure, this is the model with an older 900MHz Intel Celeron CPU, but typically the Eee PC 900 costs $300 or more, making this one heck of a deal.

So go ahead and cast your vote now.

via Geek Tonic

Looking for a cheap case or slipcover for your netbook? DealExtreme has a reversible black and red Neoprene case for $4.99. With free shipping. No, I have no idea how they can afford that either. But I’m not complaining.

The product description says the bag is for 8 or 9 inch Asus Eee PCs, but it should work with any 9 inch netbook. The folks at Ubuntu Mini picked one up for a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and it seems to fit just fine.

Update: DealExtreme is also offering a 10 inch slipcover for $5.64. thanks Szabs!