Spot the netbook
The 1st July was the official launch date for the long awaited next generation of the Asus Eee PC and MSI’s answer to it: the Wind.
Perhaps unsurprisingly it was difficult to find any of either to buy on launch day so we decided to leave it a couple of days and have another look.
MSI had listed Play.com, Ebuyer and Morgan as initial retail outlets and the situation seems to be the same with them as it was on the 1st. Play still has it on pre-order, with prices starting at £329.99, but it still doesn’t expect any until the end of the month.
There’s still no sign of it on Ebuyer, but Morgan still says it has stock at a price of £387.74. We spoke to Graham Nicklin, shop manager of Morgan’s Greenford branch. “The quantities we received were not as much as we expected, but we still have six or seven left,” he said. “They’re selling fast, however, and I think they’ll be sold out by the weekend. We’re expecting more soon.”
We asked Nicklin why Morgan was selling the Wind for so much more than the expected price, but he explained that he wasn’t involved in setting the prices.
When we asked MSI product marketing manager about the scarcity, he said: “MSI will receive the next shipment of Wind notebook next week, however as far as I am aware demand for this laptop is very high so I would guess it’s possible that UK e-tailers have sold out he first shipment already.”
There is one other place you can get a Wind - PC World. However, it goes by a different name there: the Advent 4211 netbook, and is yours for a mere £279.99.
The Eee PC 901 is still nowhere to be seen. We put a call in to Asus earlier and we’re hoping to be able to bring you an update on the situation later today.
Have any HEXUS readers been able to stock or buy either an MSI Wind or an Asus Eee PC 901? If so please tell us about it in the HEXUS.community.
Update 16:00, 3/6/08: Asus has revealed that they expect product to be available through etail from tomorrow
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