Elonex ONEt Review
It seems there’s a lot of interest in Elonex’s ONEt. Although it’s an ugly beast people seem to keen to get an idea of what it’s all about.
The whole idea behind the ONEt was to create a UMPC with a low price tag (£180ish - discounts for education workers and students). There are other variants with a higher spec that sell for a higher price but we won’t be looking at those today.
Ok, ready to take a look at what Elonex have to offer in the UMPC market space?
Design
You’ve seen the images so I guess you already know that some versions of the ONEt will never win a beauty contest. If you really want to get noticed choose the green, pink or scarlet options otherewise stick to black or white.
The ONEt follows the Asus Eee PC mold; clamshell design with dimensions of 210mm long x 140mm wide x27mm deep and weighs in at .58kg (1.3 lbs for us old timers). You’re looking at a UMPC that measures about the same as a paperback book and weighs less than most Sunday joints (to avoid any confusion; beef joints!)
The keyboard, like any other in the UMPC range, was a little fiddly at first. I know I should be getting used to this by now but I always write my reports on a desktop with its full sized keyboard. That shouldn’t an issue though as you’ll be able to connect a keyboard through one of the 3 USB connectors when you’re chairborne.
The touchpad is ok. It responds well unlike some devices we’ve tried although the mouse buttons are a little clunky and noisey.
The Elonex ONEt has a range of connectors that should keep all but the most ardent lover of peripherals happy.
The 7″ monitor is surprisingly clear giving crisp images but the major letdown here are the speakers. Audio output is a bit tinny but I can live with that.
The ONEt comes with a Linux distro pre-installed. You’ll get the usual bags of goodies such as media player, photo viewer, calculator plus Word and Excel compatible productivity tools (only up to Office 2003).
Battery life is pretty much par for the course; you’ll get about 3 hours out a new battery with normal usage. Switch on your WiFi, watch a movie etc and you’ll see this drop rapidly. We got just over two hours once we cranked up some applications and started eating processor time. Make sure you have a mains supply nearby if you want to watch some movies.
Conclusion
It’s certainly cheap and the Elonex ONEt gives you a lot of features in a small box. This will be an ideal UMPC for mobile workers and students especially if you’re mainly interested in web browsing.
Specifications
- 3 USB ports
- microphone/headset jacks
- 10/100Mbps Ethernet port
- WiFi
- external battery charger socket
- an SD card slot - up to 32GB. We recommend you buy a memory card as the OneT only has 1Gb SSD
- 128MB RAM
- 400Hz processor - couldn’t find any specifics on the Elonex site but the word is that the ONEt is powered by an Ingenics CPU The keyboard is surprisingly good, with a reasonably conventional layout for a laptop and a fair key response.
Downside
Memory - ok, it’s a basic machine but it really does need more. Disk space is also a letdown. As I said, there’s on a 1Gb SDD, of which 320 Mb is taken up by the OS install.
Similar posts:
23 Responses to “Elonex ONEt Review”
By Anon on Jul 25, 2008 | Reply
Hi - interested to see that you’ve received one of these. Was it one you ordered, or was it a sample provided by Elonex?
By james on Jul 26, 2008 | Reply
Err, neither! My friend works in the industry but hates his job so he passes kit to me for testing - effectively I do his work for him, but at the same time I get kit to review without having to do the rounds requesting hardware from vendors and suppliers
By johnl on Jul 30, 2008 | Reply
I’m still waiting for mine to arrive. More than that, I haven’t seen a single posting anywhere from anyone saying that they have received their elonex (any version).
July 30, and not a single unit shipped says to me that elonex are hiding something
By james on Jul 30, 2008 | Reply
Could be a supply issue. The ONEt is effectively a rebadged Alpha 400. If they’re having problems getting hold of the base unit nothing will move.
By jimbohh on Jul 31, 2008 | Reply
I think it’s being shipped now. I typed in a random tracking number a few digits on from mine and it came up with one that had been ‘marked for dispatch’ and then ‘parcel tracking’ after the initial ‘payment received’ and ‘order will be dispatched within 28 days’ That entry was marked July 31.
By Nick on Sep 1, 2008 | Reply
I ordered a “ONE” in March (later upgraded to a “ONEt”) and have been told that deliveries will take place this week.
Having said that, each promise of delivery so far has not materialised.
I live in hope.
By james on Sep 1, 2008 | Reply
Hmm, the joys of crappy supply chain!
By Gary Tustin on Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
I received mine yesterday. I have a 3 usb broadband connection and it does not work with this (as confirmed by Elonex). Can anyone recommend a broadband service to get this up and running? The Elonex has no CD drive therefore installation by normal means is impossible. Elonex advise using a router, bit I have no other computer. Any ideas?
By Levi on Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
Buy an external CD/DVD drive. They are not expensive and eventually you will need it.
By JJ on Sep 5, 2008 | Reply
Received mine today. It says it’s a ONEt+ but only reports 1014MB of memory (about 360MB used, 640MB free). Anyone else finding this? There’s precious little support info on their website.
By JJ on Sep 6, 2008 | Reply
Ignore my previous comment - the memory is supplied or formatted as 2 x 2GB so the rest is in the Extend folder.
Found that using df in the console after installing the root patch from LittleLinuxLaptop website.
By james on Sep 8, 2008 | Reply
Nice. Let us know what you think of the Onet.
By Andrew Garrod on Sep 9, 2008 | Reply
Had mine a couple of days now - great for Web browsing providing there’s a WiFi connection available - but having a problem with the Media Player side of things. The picture jumps, the sound too, it really struggles to read the file - and this is a five-minute .avi clip, just a music video.
Any thoughts or ideas to get this working better?
By james on Sep 10, 2008 | Reply
I didn’t see this problem with teh oneT. Could be a memory problem. Have you called the Elonex support team?
By Gert on Sep 10, 2008 | Reply
For anyone interested in getting to the innards of the OneT or Trendtac as it is called in the Netherlands.
I have put several programs and patches on our temporary download server http://www.xs4all.nl/~jostht/epc/
Recommended is the xterm.xap and xterm.info which you can install (and de-install) with the Software Installer
Enjoy,
Gert
By Steve Baker on Sep 19, 2008 | Reply
Love the OneT+. Installed xterm, ssh and midnight commander. It then worked fine and did everything I wanted …….. Untill I changed the scheme.
OOOOOOOPS … I broke it.
I now have the taskbar and the background picture is very bright and blue.
One problem. I have no icons on the desktop and no menu buttons. I can do nothing except turn my wireless on and off, check my battery level or turn the machine off.
I have tried a software reset and a hardware reset. Still nothing on the desktop.
I am still waiting for the restore image to download. Hope that works.
Any ideas??
I must say though, I think this wonderful little laptop is great and I hope it works again one day.
Cheers
Steve
Open Source/Open Mind
By steve on Sep 20, 2008 | Reply
anyone else got promised the free upgrade to the onet+
i did and when i recieved it,it was a completely different design from on their site.
so after many phone calls over a few days to both the despatch shop and the head office i finally got it swapped for the one+.
but now it says im connected wirelessly but i cant get any pages to load???
i have gone on to the elonex site but cant find any patch to solve this now yet im sure it was there previosly??
can anyone tell me how i can get the one with connection to a bt voyager 2091 to get web pages to be viewed?? or where i can get the patch
By Steve Baker on Sep 21, 2008 | Reply
I could not browse until I had set the primary and secondary dns in network setup. I just gave the same address as my gateway and all went fine from there.
Incidently, I managed to fix mine by performing a system restore from my USB stick.
It took a bit of doing and a couple of failed attempts but now all is fine.
This Onet+ is great. I think I got my moneys worth although I would like to get my hands on a One or a One+.
By james on Sep 22, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for the info. Do you have any tips or gotchas on the restore procedure that might help other users?
By laura on Dec 11, 2008 | Reply
i received my elonex webook via carphone warehouse yesterday - no problem getting net access last night and everything running surprisingly smoothly but today i have “systems restore” press f12 i have done this and it has not rectified the problem windows wants to close - what do i do?
By james on Dec 12, 2008 | Reply
Have you tried to boot using the ‘Last Known Good Configuration’ option at boot-up? Hit F8 as the webook starts and you’ll be presented with a menu. Use the down arrow to get to Last Known Good Config and hit Return (I’m assuming you’ve got the Windows version of the webook).
By louise on Dec 18, 2008 | Reply
Receieved mine i can not connect via a tmobile dongle even though i was told i could. The company are now re negging on this!! How do i connect to the internet! Has anyone else had any problems with the company?
By james on Dec 20, 2008 | Reply
Which model do you have; Windows or the Linux variant? Give me a little more info i.e. any messages etc that might be displayed.