I got an alert this morning that Best Buy was selling an Asus Eee PC 900A in its outlet store on eBay for $150. By the time I checked the link, the sale had ended. But you know what? There are a whole bunch of other netbooks in the Best Buy Outlet eBay store. 

The big box retailer carries a number of mini-laptops from Asus and MSI in its retail stores. And if you’re cool with refurbished, open box, and other previously handled (and possibly previously damaged) netbooks, you might be able to pick one up cheap from the outlet store. On the one hand, many of these items are returns, which means someone may have already discovered something wrong with them. On the other, Best Buy describes most of the items as “tested: working,” which may mean they were returned for other reaons.

via Cheap Cheap Cheap

When I spotted the LimePC at CES in January, I was told that this little netbook with a small screen, tiny keyboard and touchpad, and ARM-based Freescale CPU would sell for around $199 if and when it hit the the streets in the US. And while it’s not the most impressive mini-laptop I’ve ever tried, it’s hard to argue with that price.

But one eBay seller apparently didn’t get that message, because you can now pick up a LimeBook on eBay for $500.

The seller doesn’t explain where this item came from or why the price is so high. He also doesn’t have much ebay feedback, which doesn’t instill me with a whole heck of a lot of confidence. My guess is this is a prototype received from LimePC for one reason or another. And if you’re a collector of pre-release netbooks, maybe it’s worth $500 to you. But if you really want a LimePC for a decent price you might want to wait and see if a US based computer distributor or wireless carrier decides to adopt the platform.

thanks Joseph!

Samsung doesn’t officially sell a 9 cell battery for the NC10 netbook. But you can pick up some third party 9 cell batteries on eBay for just under $100.

While third party batteries can be flaky sometimes, often providing less run time than you’d expect or dying altogether shortly after your purchase, the folks at UMPC Fever have run some tests on the Samsung NC10 9 cell batteries, and the results look promising. A typical 6 cell battery last for between around 5 hours and 8 hours depending on how you use it. These 9 cell batteries run for between roughly 7 and 12 hours, which represents a 50% performance increase, which is pretty much what you would help for from a battery with 3 additional cells.

via Portable Monkey

The Samsung NC10 netbook already gets better battery life than most other mini-laptops on the market, thanks to a 6 cell battery and excellent power management features. But if 7 hours of run time isn’t enough for you, an eBay seller in Hong Kong is selling 9 cell, 7800mAh batteries for the Samsung NC10.

The extended battery will set you back about $100, but at least in theory it should provide around 10 hours of run time.

via Netbook News.de

This week news broke that Psion, the company that got a trademark on the term “netbook” more than 10 years ago has apparently decided to begin enforcing that trademark. Never mind the fact that Psion hasn’t released a new machine under the netbook name in 8 years, and the fact that Intel has been throwing the word around since 2007. No, Psion decided the rational thing to do was to send a cease & desist letter to a handful of bloggers that had been using the word netbook to describe something other than Psion’s product.

As I told Wired’s Gadget Lab, I haven’t received any letters from Psion, but the whole thing seems a bit silly to me. I’m not saying Psion doesn’t have a valid right to protect their trademark. But the company should be duking it out with Intel, not bloggers who are using the word that pretty much everyone in the industry is using to describe mini-laptops. I could understand perhaps going after web sites that use the word netbook in their names, but from what I understand, Psion is going after bloggers who simply used the word in articles.

Anyway, while this behavior doesn’t exactly leave me with warm and fuzzy feelings about Psion, here’s the thing. The company did release some pretty awesome devices that were years ahead of their time. Most used the EPOC operating system that later evolved into the Symbian OS which is used on may smartphones today. But the Psion Netbook, which was released in 2000, ran Windows CE.

The original Netbook had an 800 x 600 pixel touchscreen display and could run pocket versions of Office and Internet Explorer. It was about as powerful as a cellphone or PDA is today. but the form factor bears a striking resemblance to the mini-laptops we know and love today. And while the operating system is a bit on the old side, it’s possible to install a version of Linux on the hardware and run some light weight apps like the Dillo web browser if you want something a bit more up to date.

The Psion Netbook cost more than $1000 when it first hit the streets. Today you can find it for on eBay for less than $2oo.

Perhaps Psion’s sudden decision to enforce its trademark means the company will be coming out with a new and improved model soon. Or maybe the company is just trying to make a few bucks by drumming up some interest and then selling the name to Intel, the company that’s already registered the Netbook.com domain.

An eBay seller is accepting preorders for a $96 solderless Acer Aspire One touchscreen kit. While that’s not exactly cheap when you consider the fact that you can pick up an Aspire One netbook for around $300, the fact that you won’t need to pull out the old soldering gun makes the price a bit more attractive.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen netbook touchscreen kits for sale. There’s already a 7 inch touchscreen kit for the Eee PC 701, and another kit for an 8.9 inch screen that will fit in an Eee PC 900.

The latest kit is a bit on the pricy side. But in addition to promising solderless installation, it adds 3 USB ports to make it easier to add modifications to your netbook. And it has Windows, Mac, and Linux drivers. It may be described as an Acer Aspire One kit, but there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to get it to work with similarly sized netbooks. I’ll leave it to someone more familliar with netbook innards than I am to determine whether you’ll need to pull out that soldering gun or other gear if you want to cram it in an Eee PC 901 or Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

It’s also worth noting that this touchscreen kit is from EETI, a company that we already know is working on multi-touch panels for netbooks. While there’s no indication that this particular kit supports multi-touch, it might not be too long before we see a netbook touchscreen that can take full advantage of the multi-touch features of Windows 7.

via Engadget

One of the coolest things about the tiny Eee PC is that it’s extraordinarily hackable. You wouldn’t think you could fit so much junk inside of its lilliputian case, but hundreds of people have added touchscrens, Bluetooth, additional memory, and other components to their Eee PC units. If you’re not an expert with a soldering iron, or if you’ve got better things to do with your time than mod your own Eee PC to perfection, one hacker has a proposition: Buy his modded Eee PC on eBay — for $3000, give or take $2000.

The starting bid is set at $2800, and the auction has a Buy it Now price of $3200. So what do you get for your money?

• 40GB solid state memory (8GB solid state drive that shipped with the unit and 32GB of additional storage)
• 2GB of RAM (the unit originally shipped with 1GB)
• 802.11 a/b/g/draft n (originally had b/g)
• GPS
• 7 inch touchscreen
• Air Play for transmitting audio to an FM radio
• Custom heatsink to deal with additional heat from overclocking
• Bluetooth adapter
• 2 internal USB hubs for connecting all the internal goodies
• Windows XP SP3 plus a hacked video driver to display 1024 x 768 screen resolution (although I wouldn’t recommend using this on a day to day basis, as it makes the fonts look horrible)

Apparently the laptop now weighs “less than 3.5 pounds,” which is nearly double the unit’s original weight. You can find more pictures at the seller’s blog.

So far this little auction has gotten a lot of attention, but hasn’t attracted a single bit yet. Because to be perfectly honest, if you’re willing to spend that kind of money on a light weight ultraportable, you might as well pick up a Macbook Air which has a far more powerful processor. The Eee PC is still stuck with a 900MHz Celeron processor. And no matter how much you overclock it, it’s not going to perform like a dual core CPU.

[via Gizmodo]

Want an Eee PC 900 but don’t want to wait until May 12th for Asus to begin selling the laptop in the US? There’s always eBay. As AsusEeeBlog points out, the updated Eee PC is already showing up on the auction site.

It looks like you should be able to pick one up for around $650, plus a hefty shipping fee since the computer will be coming from Hong Kong or another exotic location. One seller seems to be located in Russia. It’s not entirely clear how each seller got their hands on the latest Eee PC, which has not yet been released in most countries.

Of course, you could save a few bucks by waiting for the official European or US launch.

Want to get a bit more battery life out of your Eee PC? The current generation of batteries come in 4400 and 5200 mAh varieties, which tend to die after 2-3 hours of use. Asus plans to sell a 6-cell, 7800 mAh extended battery soon, which should give you a bit more power. But if you don’t feel like waiting for Asus to begin selling extended batteries, you can pick a 3rd party battery on eBay today. Best of all, there are already 3rd party batteries with capacities up to 10400 mAh, which is reportedly enough juice to power an Eee PC for nearly 5 hours.

Asus hasn’t announced pricing on its extended batteries yet, but plans to charge $99 for a replacement 4-cell battery. So it’s probably a safe bet that the 6-cell version will cost a bit more. These 3rd party 10400 mAh batteries, on the other hand are available for about $64. They ship from China, so you may have to wait a little while to receive your package.

Note that the extended battery does jut out from the back of your computer, which will probably make it hard to fit your Eee PC in its slipcover or other tight-fitting case. But that seems like a small price to pay for a battery that can double your time away from a wall socket.