It seems we may soon see a netbook being launched by Nokia, according the India Times. Apparently, the Mobile phone giant has been watching the netbook markets with a very keen eye (yet another company that has our ‘best interests’ at heart) with a suggestion that they are going to enter the mobile computing market. “Dates, gimme dates!” - we don’t have any. Nokia are keeping tit lipped on this news and there doesn’t seem to be much info floating around the wonderful world of the internet right now so we’ll just have to wait and see.

When you look at it, the announcement would seem pretty logical. Aside from the potentially massive profits, Nokia could build a pretty good netbook as their NOkia N97 mobile phone pretty much has all the features of a very small computer (Nokia have even ventured so far as to call the N97 a “mobile computer”). Sure, they aren’t a well known computer manufacturer but they all had to start somewhere.

One area where a Nokia netbook could excel is in the builtin support for 3G functionality - you’d be hard pressed to find another company that knows more about this than Nokia. Their relatively early entry into a market where manufacturers are starting to off 3G services in their netbooks could be very profitable for Nokia.

That’s pretty much it, for now. We can only wait to see what’s on the horizon but for now we can only guess that Nokia will, hopefully, use the Maemo OS seen on their tablets as the OS installation - very nice.

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…if you really want it! Yeah, you heard right - Microsoft and Nokia have announced a collaboration which will see users getting the option of running MS’s Office software on a range of mobile devices.

The announcement means that, in the near future, Microsoft’s productivity suite will be available on a range of Nokia’s Symbian based devices - I’m not sure how this fits in with Redmonds Open Source views..a profit is a profit, I guess! From the outset, this offering will be made available to a wide range of Nokia smartphones, starting with the Nokia Eseries.

The announcement allows Microsoft to expand their Microsoft Office Mobile offerings to a potential market of around 200 million devices. Business users seem likely to be the primary target as MS attempts to make up for recent losses but you can bet your bottom dollar that everyday users will soon be able to join the ‘party’.

Nokia smartphones should start to ship with Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile early next year with a raft of other Office apps and services following in the wake. These will include:

• OCM (Office Communicator Mobile) - MS’s Enterprise instant messaging and presence suite
• Access to corporate intranet and extranet portals built on Microsoft SharePoint Server
• Centralised management of devices using Microsofts SCCM software

For any of you thinking that Redmond is finally going soft on Open Source software, don’t be fooled. Sure, they have offered up some code for inclusion in the Linux kernel but that doesn’t mean they are ‘embracing’ their competitors. At the end of the day, this is about profit and any company that wants to survive needs to look at partners, no matter who they are.

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• Dimensions: 12.8 by 7.8 by 0.7 inches (approx)
• Weight: 2.6 pounds
• 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and 1GB memory
• Open-source Webkit browser/operating system (courtesy of Fusion Garage)
• One USB port
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, 3G, mobile broadband

If you haven’t heard of the Crunchpad, it’s the brainchild of Michael Arrington and his team over at TechCrunh. Originally designed to be an ultra lightweight tablet, the Crunchpad does away with traditional disk based storage in favour of saving your files to the ‘cloud’ via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. The lightweight tag seems to have gone out of the window with reported being around 2.6 lbs (about 1.8Kg) which makes it slightly heavier than Asus’s stunning offering, the Eee PC 1005 HA. Another aspect that made our eyes water is the price; around $399. Now, that is not a high price tag for a mobile device but there are many more options out there that are far cheaper and they have built in storage (personally, I’m not ready to throw caution to the wind and let someone else hold, and potentially view, all my data).

A number of analysts have questioned the inclusion of 3G support in the Crunchpad. Sure, it’s adds to the price and most users have Wi-Fi at home but this feature allows it to be used almost anywhere. A big thumbs up in my eyes.

A major stumbling block for Arrington and co. comes in the form of Apple. Rumours abound that they will be releasing some form of ultra mobile device in the near future (possibley a beefed up, and enlarged, version of of the iPod Touch). Would this stall the adoption of the Crunchpad? Almost definitely. Apple is the current darling of the computing generation and buyers seem to hanging on the word of every new release from Apple. Rumours about Apples entry into the netbook market don’t go unnoticed, or unheeded. Whilst I’m by no means an Apple ‘fanboy’, given the choice, I know which option I’d take.

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Pretty much all of the major ISP’s offer you a ‘free’ netbook when you sign up for broadband services so it’s no surprise that Virgin Media has jumped on the bandwagon. Virgins offering, the Freedom, will be offered up to subscribers who sign up for lengthy fixed and mobile broadband deals. So, is theere anything special about this netbook?

As you can from the image below, the Virgin Media Freedom netbook looks fairly attractive - red or black finish. ‘I don’t care what it looks like!’ Sure, neither do we. For most users, functionality is everything and the Freedom certainly gives as good as any other netbook: Intel Atom 1.60GHz processor, 10.2–inch screen, Windows XP and 1GB of RAM. The HDD is only 120GB HDD but, to be honest, if you really need to store that much data would you really rely on a standard laptop disk?

As you’d expect, there’s Wi–Fi connecitivity. The main thing that lets this offering down is the battery life - two and a half hours! Pretty poor. Now that hardly does its cred any good when most netbooks can squeeze out almost double that.

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Eee Keyboard is coming

The Asus Eee Keyboard has been doing the rounds since about January but there’s now a firm releas date: August 09. For any of you living in a cave, here’s a some info on this curious piece of hardware. The Eee PC Keyboard is built from the guts of an Asus Eee PC netbook computer and housed in a keyboard. Pretty simple, eh? It does have a particularly nice touch - you don’t need a monitor. There is a touch screen on the right hand side rather than a screen at the top.

The idea behind the keyboard is that, rather than hooking up to your PC, you will connected via wireless to a HDTV. You can then control the television using the touch screen. Pretty cool.

Eee Keyboard Specs

So now you know what it does, you’ll want to know about the hardware, right? Considering it has been designed as a form of remote control it’s actually pretty powerful. Inside you’ll find the Intel Atom N280 1.66 Ghz processor, a 23Gb SSD (solid state hard disk) and a battery. On the right hand side of the external panel there’s a 5 inch touch screen (resolution of 800 x 480 pixels). Now if you decide you don’t want to connect to your TV you have the option of using the keyboard as a PDA although I’m not sure how you’ll fit that in your pocket.

The only negative point we can see from the specs is the memory: it’s hardwired so you, unless you pretty handy with a soldering iron, there’s not much chance of slapping an extra couple of Gb’s in!

Either way, as a reminder of the way life was with the Amiga and Commodore 64, the Eee Keyboard PC will prove to be a very interesting model to be included in the Asus line.

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Want to install Ubuntu on you Eee PC netbook? The Asus range of netbooks has a pretty loyal following but many users simply aren’t happy with the UI that comes as default. Being an Ubuntu fan, and an Eee PC 1000 owner, I’ve been looking for a simple way to install Ubuntu. The lack of CD/DVD on the Eee 1000 has certainly not helped. If you’ve similar problems I’ve got the answer - Easy Peasy - an Ubuntu distro designed specifically for the Eee range.

If you don’t want to wade through all of the Easy Peasy documentation you can take a look at this tutorial: Install Ubuntu on the Eee PC - it’s simple to follow and should have you up and runningin no time at all (ok, the install process is slow…RTFM!)

The current version, 1.1, is not without bugs but you’ll find a huge FAQ with answers to most of the problems seen by users. On a personal not, I did have a few minor bugs but these were quickly rectified with the help of the user community. Anyway, what are you waiting for? Go and try out Ubuntu on your Eee PC - I love and I think you will too.

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