NEC’s Versa N1100 partners a 9 inch screen with a multi-touch trackpad and a keyboard designed for ‘enhanced usability’, but the $749 price tag isn’t so appealing.
Of
course there aren’t enough netbooks on the market. We’ve only around ten of these pint-sized portables, right? Well let’s have one more for the road!
One sale from late November, NEC’s Versa N1100 lands in the same mid-size 9 inch space as the Asus Eee PC 900, Acer’s Aspire One, Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9 and the HP 2133.
And it’s got the the same tried-and-true specs that we’re used to seeing by now: Intel’s 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive pre-loaded with Windows XP, Wi-Fi, a 0.3 megapixel webcam plus a memory card reader and a trio of USB ports. The de rigeur 3 cell battery will deliver, at best, three hours between charges.
But what’s this? Has the N1100 also got a snazzy backlight keyboard? Nope. Just kidding. Sorry to get your hopes up, that
was rather cruel of us.
What
can be said for the keyboard is that it’s 90% the size of a standard QWERTY keyboard, with NEC claiming a short 2mm keystroke means “users will find typing easy and comfortable considering the physically small size of the device”. We’ll let you know once we get one in for review.
Another unique touch is the multitouch or ‘gesture-enabled’, although exactly what this does and how well it does also awaits our hands-on review. We’re pleased to see the N1100 sports the same canny power-independent USB ports, which can be used to charge your iPod or other devices even when the netbook is turned off.
Those are some welcome finesses to the somewhat staid formula, but the $749 RRP makes the N1100 the most expensive 9 inch netbook on the market.
The styling is also something out of the ordinary: the squared-off black chassis and glossy lid makes the N1100 resemble a Bento Box, although we reckon the sharply contrasting white keyboard spoils the effect.