Hardware (5192)

Maplin joins the netbook party

With £169 minibook

18 September 2008 11:56 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Even budget retailer Maplin has entered the netbook market with an entry dubbed the minibook.

The ultra-portable laptop, as they phrase it, is truly compact measuring 222 x 165 x 29.5mm and weighs in at 650 grams, but size isn't everything and the specs are slightly on the light side.

With a 7-inch TFT screen, the minibook gets a XBurst 400MHz CPU, 128MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage.

On the plus side there are three USB ports, stereo speakers and built-in microphone, SD card reader, 10/100Mbps Ethernet port and b/g Wi-Fi.

Running Linux, the machine offers various Open Office programmes as well as a PDF viewer and Firefox for browsing.

Available now - although only 'til the end of the month - Maplin is selling the device at £169.