The LG X110 netbook may not be available in the US, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find one near the US. Canadian electronics retail Future Shop is selling the netbook for $480, or just under $400 US. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like the store ships to zip codes south of the border. But if you happen to be planning a trip to Canada, you might be able to pick one up in-store.

On the other hand, the LG X110 is a pretty average looking netbook that bears a more than passing resemblance to an MSi Wind U100. It’s got a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, a 10 inch, 1024  x 600 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. This model comes with a 3 cell battery which is good for about 2 to 3 hours of use. In other words, there’s not much reason to choose this netbook over any number of similar mini-laptops that are available in the US. The main advantage the LG netbook has in Europe and the other places where it’s sold is that it’s available from some wireless broadband providers with a built-in 3G modem.

thanks Krystan!

The MSI Wind U90 is the U100’s little cousin. Well, it’s not actually smaller. It just has a smaller screen and a larger bezel around the display. So if you want to save a few bucks, you can pick up the U90 instead of the U100, right? Well, not if you live in the US, because it’s not available here — unless you can find an international retailer willing to ship to the US.

And that’s exactly what Liliputing Forum member FDAMAN did. He discovered that Canadian retailer NCIX is selling the U90 for about $370 US including shipping to New York. So he placed an order and 4 days later, a box arrived.

The U90 does have some French symbols on the keyboard, but the operating system is in English. This version of the MSI Wind laptop ships with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (the same distro HP includes on lower end Mini-Note models), and has a 3 cell battery and just 512MB of RAM. The US version comes with 1GB of RAM and a choice of a 3 or 6 cell battery. But while the US version of the MSI Wind currently ships with an 80GB hard drive, the version FDAMAN ordered from Canada has a 120GB hard drive.

The bezel around the screen doesn’t look all that bad. And the advantage to using a bezel to put a smaller screen in the same case as the U100 is that the keyboard is identical to the U100 keyboard. That means if you’re comfortable touch-typing on one laptop, you should have no problems with the other.

You can check out FDAMAN’s unboxing videos after the break. The first video shows the unboxing and the first bootup of the U90. But since SUSE takes a while to configure the first time you load it, he shut off the camera for a few minutes and shot a second video showing the OS loading. 

Read the rest of this entry »

What happens when computer prices start dropping down below the $300 mark? They become about as valuable as the figurative toaster your bank will give you for opening a new account. Well, a $250 toaster anyway. Honestly, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a bank actually offer a toaster to new account holders, but I’ve also never seen a bank offer a computer — until now. Because RBC Royal Bank in Canada is giving away free Eee PCs to customers who open a new account, transfer funds from another financial institution, and jump through a few other hoops.