We’ve had a few mails about whether the web cam still works once this mod is complete so be sure to checkout the special guest apperance when the web cam is tested out.

Enjoy!

Time for our second touch screen install tutorial and this time we’re going to use the MSI Wind. As you may or may not already know the MSI Wind comes in many other brand names other than MSI. For this tutorial we’re going to use the Advent 4211. The touch screen we used was supplied by www.fidohub.com who are based in Taiwan. So far we’ve used two of their touch screens and both times everything has been superb.  Hoda Technology/Fidohub were also featured on the MSNBC Top 10 Gifts for the hard-core techie and we are confident we are fitting a quality component.

You can buy the touch screens direct from fidohub, we were supplied with a Fed Ex shipping number so we could trace every step of the parcel’s journey and shipping only took a few days from Taiwan to the UK..

–==[ W A R N I N G ]==–

As with all procedures that involve opening up the case and modifying the original equipment this could and probably will invalidate your warranty and/or you could permanently damage your machine so be careful. Netbookmag.com will not be held responsible for any damage, use this guide at your own risk.

We recommend that whenever sensitive electrical components are going to be handled that the user take the relevant antistatic precautions.

OK, lets get on with it =) Give yourself a couple of hours to do the upgrade as you don’t want to be rushing things. It might seem like a very complicated upgrade due to the amount of steps we have shown but this tutorial is aimed at all from the complete novice to the l33t modder. Also take into account there is no soldering required and theoretically this upgrade can be reversed with no permanent damage if performed correctly.

All the pictures in this tutorial are click-able so you can that see the images in great detail.

Here’s are a few pictures of the Touch screen that we received from Fidohub.com:

________________________________________

This is the netbook before the touch screen panel has been fitted. What we want to do is to get access to the LCD so we can fit the touch-screen panel. The following steps will show you how to do it.

________________________________________

Close the lid, flip the netbook over and remove the 9 screws keeping the back cover on. We have circled the locations of the screws above. Once the screws are removed put them somewhere safe for later. Carefully lift the back cover off the netbook, it might be a little stiff to take off if it hasn’t previously been removed.

________________________________________

Above shows the back cover removed.

________________________________________

We are now going to remove the WiFi card. (Our card will more than likely be different to the one in your netbook but the main difference may be that the antenna wires are lower down)

Unclip the 2 WiFi antenna wires shown above in the yellow boxes, they will lift off quite easily. Next we remove the screw that holds the WiFi card in place. This is marked above with a red circle.

Once the screw is removed you can lift the WiFi card up slightly and pull it out from the slot. Thats it, WiFi card removed!

________________________________________

Next up we pull back the black cloth tape a little as shown above and then unplug the connector as shown above in the red box. The tape can stay where it is for when we re-connect the connector later on.

________________________________________

Let’s go to the other corner for a minute and remove the hinge screw as shown in the red circle. Remember there’s a wire between the screw and the hinge. Don’t worry if you forget as we’ll remind you later. Next we need to unplug the large rectangle shaped connector as shown in the red rectangular box.

________________________________________

Back to the other corner now and completely remove the cloth tape as shown above but keep it safe for later. Now that the tape is removed you will see a small white connector, unplug it.

We now need to remove the hinge screw as shown above in the red circle.

________________________________________

Now that we have unpluged and unscrewed everything we can remove the bottom half from the top half of the netbook. Simply pull the motherboard half towards you and make sure no wires get snagged anywhere.

Once its’ completely free put the motherboard half out of the way for later.

________________________________________

Let’s work on the screen half!

We need to remove the little rubber screw covers that are located in the red circles above. They will lift off quite easily. Keep them safe as they will be going back on.

________________________________________

Once the rubber screw covers are removed we can remove the 4 screws that were underneath them.

________________________________________

Now we can remove the hinge covers as shown above. We found them easier to remove if we pulled the hinge cover from the top.

________________________________________

Now remove the hinge cover from the other other side.

We’ve also took a nice close up photo of the wires/hinge for when it comes to putting things back together.

________________________________________

Carefully use a phone card, credit card or anything similar to slide it along the joints of the screen bezel to unclasp it as shown above.

________________________________________

Gently start pulling the screen bezel away from the screen until it’s completley removed. You might find it sticks a little around the webcam area, this is due to a little double sided sticky tape behind the bezel.

________________________________________

Just a little info here guys, ever wondered why you have a magnetic USB port on your netbook? Can you see where we have marked with the 2 red boxes? Those are magnets and theres a 99.99999999% chance that they will jump out of where they are supposed to be as we found out many times :). Just remember that they go blue stripe up if you need to put them back.

________________________________________

We now remove the LCD hinge screw on both hinges as shown above. Once the screws are out we can remove the LCD hinges, they just lift out.

________________________________________

We now need to take the screws out of the LCD brackets so there will be more room for the Touch Screen panel once everything goes back together. Lift up one side of the LCD and remove the 2 screws in the red circles then do the same for the other side. Don’t take the brackets off when the screws are removed just leave them where they were.

________________________________________

Time to prepare the touch panel. If you look at the picture above you can see that the ribbon is on the lower right hand side of the panel. This is the way it will go onto your LCD so we’ll call this the front.

Ribbon on the bottom left then we’ll call this the back.

________________________________________

Get the rubber strips that were supplied with your touch screen kit as we are going to put them on the panel.

________________________________________

Remove the protective film from the front of the touch panel as shown above.

_______________________________________

We now need to carefully put the rubber strips around the perimeter of the panel.

Make sure the rubber strips avoid contact with the active part of the panel, the active part of the panel is everything on the inside of the silver border. Keep the rubber strips on the silver border as they could give false contact signals if touching the active area when everything is put back together. Take your time on this stage and make sure you get it right.

________________________________________

Completely cover the perimeter of the screen as shown above and trim any excess rubber. Don’t worry if the rubber is hanging over the outer edges of the panel.

________________________________________

NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME TO CLEAN YOUR LCD SCREEN AS WE WILL SOON BE PUTTING THE TOUCH SCREEN PANEL ON THE LCD.

________________________________________

Flip over the touch screen panel so the back is facing you and remove the protective film.

________________________________________

See the blue band running all around the screen? This is covering the double sided sticky tape that will attach the panel to your LCD. Pull back and peel off the thin blue film.

________________________________________

Once you’ve peeled off the blue film you can flip the panel over so the ribbon is on the bottom right.

Carefully line up the panel on your nice and clean LCD screen. We found it best if we started in one corner and looked along to see if the panel was nicely aligned. When you are happy you can apply light pressure all around the perimeter of the panel so the double sided sticky tape attaches the panel to your LCD screen as shown above.

Remember that the panel actually attaches to the silver outer of the LCD screen and not on the LCD itself.

Thats it, the hardest part is over

________________________________________

Let prepare the touch-hub controller board.

Get the controller board and the large double sided rubber sticky pad that came supplied with your touch panel kit.

Peel off one side and stick it onto the bottom of the controller board as shown above. Don’t bother peeling off the second side from the pad just yet.

________________________________________

If you haven’t done so already put the LCD hinges back and screw them down as shown above.

________________________________________

Bend the ribbon cable as shown above. You can see there is a screw hole next to the cable so make sure you bend the cable away from there. Next you can attach the ribbon cable to the controller board as shown above. You may want to attach a small piece of electrical type tape to the ribbon cable and the silver part of the LCD housing to keep the ribbon cable in position.

________________________________________

Nearly time to put the screen bezel back on. First check the wires running down the right hand side of the screen to make sure they are nicely tucked away. Also check that the 2 magnets are where they belong.

Once your happy with everything you can start putting the bezel back on. Pay close attention to the wires coming from the hinges as we want them in the same locations as before we took the bezel off. If you have forgot where they were just look at the pictures near the start of the tutorial.

Once the bezel is lined up and the wires are in place you can start gently pressing down on the outer edges of the bezel to clip it into place. Once done we can put the screws back as shown in the red circles above.

DO NOT FULLY TIGHTEN THE SCREWS AS YOU COULD CRACK THE TOUCH SCREEN

When your happy with everything you can stick the rubber screw covers back on and that’s the LCD side of things more or less sorted. The hard work is over

Grab the motherboard side of your netbook and put it into position so we can screw down the hinges.

________________________________________

OK, screw down the bottom left hinge as shown above, don’t forget about the wire that goes between the screw and the hinge

Next you can reconnect the wire/plug as marked above in the red rectangle, just push it down then tuck the wires away like they were.

________________________________________

We can now push the hinge cover back on, make sure no wires are being nipped / snagged.

________________________________________

Screw down the other hinge as shown above.

________________________________________

Push the hinge cover back on taking extra care that you have the wire locations correct and that you don’t nip any wires with the hinge cover.

________________________________________

Within your touch screen box you will find four wires. You want the one that goes from the big red rectangle on the motherboard to the small red rectangle shown on the touch screen controller board. Check the connectors out to see which wire it is.

For ease we will call one wire red and the other yellow as in our tutorial we have marked their positions in red and yellow.

________________________________________

Once you have the right wire go ahead and plug it into the motherboard. Dont bother connecting the other side of that wire into the controller board just yet. Ignore the wire we have marked in yellow for now.

________________________________________

Take the red and black twisted wire and plug it back into where it came from, we have marked it’s location with a red rectangle above. Peel back the black tape a little and put it back over that wire as it was near the beginning of this tutorial.

________________________________________

Get your Wi-Fi card and push it back into the slot where it came from and then tighten the screw shown in the red circle.

________________________________________

Clip both Wi-Fi antennas back onto the Wi-Fi card as above.

________________________________________

Nows the time not to ignore the wire marked in yellow like we told you to do before.

Out of the 3 wires you have left in your touch screen kit find the one that fits the connections marked above in yellow. One side needs to fit the motherboard connection and the other side will go to the touch screen controller board where we have also marked in yellow. When you have the correct wire connect it as above.

________________________________________

Now tuck that connection along the side of the Wi-Fi card as shown and then stick the tape over it also like above.

________________________________________

Go ahead and peel the backing paper off the sticky rubber pad on the bottom of your controller board and stick it in the location as above.

You can connect the wire that we marked in yellow to the controller board shown above also marked yellow. Now connect the other wire (RED) to the controller board as marked above in red.

________________________________________

Heres the wiring route we took and we also stuck the wires down with some insulating tape so they dont move about. Make sure you have no wires crossing over any screw holes.

_______________________________________

Replace the black cloth tape back over the wires near the hinge as shown above, make sure you have the tape tucked in where it runs along the battery compartment.

Have a double check of your wires and connections to make sure nothing will get damaged when you put the back casing on. Everything cool? Let put the back casing back on.

________________________________________

Basicly its the same as when we took it off but in reverse. Once it’s in place put the screws back in the locations above and tighten them.

Thats the hardware installation complete just a couple of more steps :o)

When you power on your netbook you need to enable the camera by pressing Fn + F6 before you install the drivers for the touch screen.

________________________________________

Once you have the driver installed conduct the 25 point linearization to give you accuracy with your new touch screen.

Thats it folks, mission complete!

Your new MSI Wind touchscreen is installed and we hope you feel more confident with having a go at fitting one yourself. As with the NC10 Touchscreen install guide we are going to shoot a quick video showing the touchscreen in action and we will post that up real soon…

We’ve tried the touch screen on the MSI Wind with Windows XP, Windows Vista (also with origami project) Windows 7 and OS X Leopard 10.5.6 and it worked without any problems at all :o)

Once again a big huge thanks to Fidohub.com for supplying us with the touch screen and be sure to check them out.

________________________________________

The touch screen we used was supplied by www.fidohub.com who are based in Taiwan. Not only would we highly recommend their products but communication and service from the company are both excellent. Hoda Technology/Fidohub were also featured on the MSNBC Top 10 Gifts for the hard-core techie and we were confident we were fitting a quality component.

You can buy the touch screens direct from fidohub, we were supplied with a FedEx shipping number so we could trace every step of the parcel’s journey and shipping only took a few days from Taiwan to the UK.

–==[ W A R N I N G ]==–

As with all procedures that involve opening up the case and modifying the original equipment this could and probably will invalidate your warranty and/or you could permanently damage your machine so be careful. Netbookmag.com will not be held responsible for any damage, use this guide at your own risk.

We recommend that whenever sensitive electrical components are going to be handled that the user take the relevant antistatic precautions.

OK, lets get on with it =) Give yourself a couple of hours to do the upgrade as you don’t want to be rushing things. It might seem like a very complicated upgrade due to the amount of steps we have shown but this tutorial is aimed at all from the complete novice to the l33t modder. Also take into account there is no soldering required and theoretically this upgrade can be reversed with no permanent damage if performed correctly.

All the pictures in this tutorial are click-able so you can see the images in great detail.

Here’s a few pictures of the Touch screen we received from Fidohub.com:

Below is where we start the first step.

If you look at the screen you will see on the at the top of the outer bezel there are rubber circle screw covers on either side and there are two square screw covers either side at the bottom. We have circled the location on the picture above, these need removed and it’s easily done using something like a very small flat head screwdriver, don’t be to rough though.

________________________________________________________

Remove the 4 screws in each corner of the screen bezel. Above is a picture of the lower and upper left hand screws.

________________________________________________________

Using something like a credit card or a phone card to carefully slide along the joins of the bezel to unclasp it.

________________________________________________________

These are the bezel clips that you can see where the battery compartment is. Carefully run your card or finger along the join the unclasp these.

________________________________________________________

You can see here where the bezel clips are at the top of the screen.

________________________________________________________

Carefully remove the bezel from the screen and you will be left with the above. It may seen a little stuck near the top as there is sticky tape at the top roughly on either side of the web-cam but on the metal LCD surround.

________________________________________________________

Pop the battery back in and start your machine up. You need to do this so you can align the touchscreen panel to the LCD screen correctly.

________________________________________________________

Grab the touchscreen and remove the protective film from the side that will be touching the LCD screen. If your not sure which side to take off then hold the screen so that it is facing you and the ribbon is on the bottom left. The side now facing you is what is going onto the LCD screen so take the protective film off that side. On the same side if you look carefully around the touch screen edges you will see a thin band running all the way around the touchscreen panel, this is double sided sticky tape and needs the cover peeled off.
This will help the touch panel adhere to the screen.
Flip the touch screen panel over do the ribbon is now on the bottom right and go ahead and line up the panel to your screen. Be extra careful at this point as once the touch-panel is in place it’s very hard to adjust it. The touch panel should be fitted within the silver border of the LCD screen. Just remember to take your time with the above step and don’t fully press down on the edges of the touchscreen unless your 100% happy with it’s positioning.

________________________________________________________

Above is a picture of the touchscreen attached, note where the ribbon cable is located (bottom right).
Now you can turn the machine off, carefully close the screen, flip the netbook over and remove the battery as we are now going to remove the bottom cover.

________________________________________________________

Above are the locations of the screws that need removed, take out all 14 of them.

________________________________________________________

Time to remove the bottom of the case but you need to loosen it first.

________________________________________________________

We found it best to start near one of hinges and work our way around using something like a credit card / phone card etc…

________________________________________________________

The clips near the space where the battery goes are quite stiff and usually requires a little force, not too much though. The inner side of the hinge can be quite tricky so we use a flat head jewellers screwdriver placed it in the gap as shown and gave it a slight turn. If you do this be careful as you could mark the casing. Once you have released all the clips the bottom casing will lift off, give it a slight wiggle if it seems to stick.

________________________________________________________

This is the bottom of the netbook with the cover off. The bottom left of the motherboard you can see where we have marked with 2 rectangles, these are the wifi antennas (2 wires, one black and one grey) that need removed, they just clip off then work both wires free right up to the top left hand hinge.
The rectangles on the upper right of the motherboard are two more connectors which need unplugged, simply unplug them.

OK, now onto the screws which we have marked with red circles. We need to remove all 6 screws marked. The top left 2 and top right 2 are the hinge screws and the ones just below the top right hinge are attached to the last 2 connectors you have just unplugged.

________________________________________________________

Flip the netbook over again and gently open the screen like above as you are ready to separate the screen from the bottom.
Gently pull apart and check if there are any wires catching anywhere.

________________________________________________________

Here you can see the screen completely separated from the bottom of the netbook.

________________________________________________________

Time to work back on the screen side of the netbook again. Remove the 2 screws on the left hinge and the 2 screws on the right hinge as shown above.

________________________________________________________

The screws removed.

________________________________________________________

If you look on the left and right sides of the LCD screen you will see a silver metal bracket running from the top to the bottom of the screen. These need to be removed and we can do so by removing the 2 screws on either bracket, one is at the top and one is at the bottom. The above pictures are of the brackets that need removed and show the screw locations.

________________________________________________________

Here are the removed brackets. we won’t be putting these back on so you can put them to one side.

________________________________________________________

We now need to remove the top half of the right hand hinge as shown above.

________________________________________________________

Grab the ribbon coming from the bottom right of the touchscreen and fold it behind the screen and then back out at the side as shown above.

________________________________________________________

If you haven’t done so already it’s time to put the double sided sticky rubber tape onto the touch-hub controller board. This will not only stick the board to your motherboard but it will also act as insulation.
Peel off the backing and stick it on the side shown on the right hand picture above.

________________________________________________________

The wires that come from the controller board need fed through the hinge as above. Just follow the wires that are already there.

________________________________________________________

Bend the ribbon cable over again and plug it in to the connector on the end of the wires you have just fed through the hinges on the previous step.

________________________________________________________

Pop the top back on the hinge making sure that you don’t catch any wires.

________________________________________________________

Above is a picture of the rubber shock absorbers that come with your touch screen.

________________________________________________________

Peel the shock absorbers off the backing paper one by one and stick them on the metal frame that surrounds the touch screen panel. We’ve marked the four locations to stick them in red above.

________________________________________________________

Above is a picture of the fitted shock absorbers. Just remember that they don’t stick on the panel itself but on the silver frame surrounding the LCD screen.

________________________________________________________

Fix the hinges back to the panel by screwing the screws back in as above. Now you can peel off the last protective film from the touch screen as we are going to refit the bezel.

________________________________________________________

Put the bezel back on and lightly press around the edges of the bezel to clip it back together.
Now you need to center the screen by moving it left, right up or down. Once your happy that it’s centered you can lightly screw the screws in each corner. DO NOT FULLY TIGHTEN THEM AS YOU COULD CRACK THE TOUCH SCREEN, as soon as you feel them starting to tighten stop screwing.

________________________________________________________

You can see above that there is no gap between the bezel and the screen once the screws are in place, this is due to us removing the LCD brackets earlier. Everything should fit nicely.

________________________________________________________

OK, we are now ready to attach the screen back to the bottom half of the netbook. Just do in reverse what you did to detach the screen earlier. Once in place put the screws back in the holes marked above and tighten making sure that no wires are being jammed.

________________________________________________________

You can see above that we have re attached the wifi antennas and you can also see where to stick the touch hub controller board and the route of the wires coming from the hinge.

________________________________________________________

Above we show a close up of the route we took with the wires from the hinge to the touch hub controller board.

________________________________________________________

Fit the supplied wires into the touch hub controller board as shown above.

________________________________________________________

Take a good look at this picture and place the wires from the touch hub controller board as shown, screw the screw down connectors as shown and push down the connectors onto the motherboard as shown. Take your time making sure you have the right wire in the right place as you don’t want to mess it up now we’re almost done!

________________________________________________________

Above is a picture of how things should look once everything is complete. Use a bit tape as shown to tape the wires down and also check you don’t have any wires going over one of the screw holes for the rear cover.

________________________________________________________

That’s it You just need to replace the rear cover. Gently press it down into place, we have found that once you have the mic/headphone socket in the right place as shown above your pretty much there.
Once you’ve clicked it all into place, you can re fit all 14 screws and tighten them up.
Woohoo, YOUR DONE!
Install the correct driver from the supplied disc and go through the 25 point linearization calibration to set up your new touch screen.

We would have preferred to see a driver/software download option from fidohub rather than having to use the disc as it meant having to mess about and hook up the external drive as we know not everyone has an external CD/DVD drive.

OK, well that’s the NC10 touchscreen tutorial done and we hope you feel more confident with having a go fitting one yourself. We are going to shoot a quick video showing the touchscreen in action and we will post that up real soon.

Once again a big thanks to Fidohub.com for supplying us with the touch screen and be sure to check them out.

________________________________________________________

Acer, the third largest vendor in the global PC market (source: Gartner data, 1H 2008), today presented an all-new 10” Aspire One netbook, complete with a 10-inch screen, Windows XP and integrated Bluetooth, and designed for a fast, simple and utterly cool online life.

Only one year after first appearing on the market, netbooks have totally revolutionized the PC market, helping to form an entirely new market segment that users themselves created through a real need to be online all the time and to socialize around the clock.

Acer, thanks to its unique ability to read market trends and anticipate user needs, rapidly introduced the Aspire One, the world’s most popular netbook.

“Despite the recent problems of the financial markets and general economic uncertainty, the netbook and notebook markets will continue to grow in 2009” said Gianfranco Lanci, President & CEO, Acer Inc. “With companies focused on containing the crisis, consumers and products designed for them become more important as users simply cannot do without their personal communication instruments.

At a little more than one kilo (1.18 kg), the new 10” Aspire One combines style, great features and a new form factor to provide the best combination of ultra-portability and maximum screen size for navigation and data input.

Designed for an optimal web browsing experience and Internet productivity, the 10” Aspire One includes a 10.1” WSVGA LED backlit display with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels that offers a broader vision for more convenient navigation. Integrated on top of the screen is the unique Acer Crystal Eye webcam optimized for poorly lit environments, a tiny window, tastefully encircled by a mirror rim, that keeps you connected to the world though live video streaming, video chats and conferences.

The 10” Aspire One comes with 802.11b/g WiFi and Acer Signal Up technology built-in as standard for easy access to available wireless networks. In addition is equipped with Bluetooth and can also be specified with a choice of embedded WiMAX or 3G wireless technologies for unlimited connectivity.

The 10” Aspire One meets Energy Star 4.0 requirements and can be equipped with a 6-cell Li-ion battery pack. With incredibly low idle power consumption, the 10” Aspire One guarantees up to 7 hours battery life for maximum fun. The battery indicator, placed on the front side is immediately recognizable even when the netbook is folded.

But the 10” Aspire One not only keeps you always connected; it keeps you connected with style. Available in four high-gloss color options including white, blue, red and black, the unmistakable design immediately catches the eye. The slim and streamlined Aspire One evokes speed and mobility, making it clear that it was designed for a life on the go. Stylish details such as the aerodynamic shaped metallic hinge with a colored accent and the fancy bright color rim that encircles the mirror plate power button immediately draw attention. The brushed-metal palm rest offers a refined look while avoiding unaesthetic fingerprints.

The 10” Aspire One is equipped with an Intel® Atom™ processor, Mobile Intel® 945GSE Express Chipset or Mobile Intel® 82801GBM Chipset and can be equipped with up to 2 GB of DDR memory for an enhanced user experience. Notwithstanding the small size, the 10” Aspire One features a large 160 GB internal hard drive. In addition the 10” Aspire One features a multi-in-one card reader for absolute data freedom.

The Aspire One comes with Windows XP® Home operating system; additional preinstalled software includes Acer eRecovery Management, Acer Launch Manager, Adobe® Reader®, McAfee® Internet Security Suite, Microsoft® Office Trial 2007.

The Aspire one comes with a 1-year carry in warranty which can be extended to 2 years with Acer Advantage.

Jan 23, 2009Milan Acer presents the new Aspire One with a 10-inch form factor Ultimate mobile freedom, now even bigger

Taken from Acer Website

We’ve got a tasty treat coming up for you guys but we’re not going to give the game away yet.

All we will say is “watch this space.”

Here’s some more photos to make you drool. The new AAO is sounding and looking better and better every day.

Heres the flicks, click to enlarge!

Thousands have splashed out on the AAO (Acer Aspire One) and many have had gripes with things such as hmmmm screen a bit small or hmmmm, a bit of a bugger to upgrade the memory etc or hmmmm, Those damn trackpad buttons or even hmmmm, excessive fan noise.

It looks like Acer is aiming to please even more people now by bringing a new unit to the market. Say hello to the AAO 103 10″ (Acer Aspire One 103 10″) and as you might have guessed it has a 10″ screen opposed to the 8.9″ currently offered. The track-pad buttons have been moved from the side to the bottom as on 99.99999999r% of all other track-pad devices and upgraders/modders have been given an easier life by Acer giving them nice little screw off covers that give access to memory, wifi and hdd. The excitable fan may or not be present in the new model. The AAO 103 version comes with a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 160GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, multi-touch track-pad (with proper placed buttons), Bluetooth, WiFi, SDHC card reader, and optional 3G connectivity.

If they keep the pricing sensible on this unit, especially with the current climate of penny watchers then Acer should be onto a winner.

It comes encased in a sweet aluminium case very similar to their older under powered 2133. HP have made a lot of improvements when comparing this to a 2133 or even the 1000 model. They are hoping that not only the home user will be buying this model but HP also are aiming this at the business world.

HP have option of 3 cell and 6 cell batteries with this model and HP are claiming that the 6 cell option will churn out a staggering 8hrs of life between charges, this obviously depends on how you use the machine.

Other options include either a 160GB HDD (Hard Disk Drive) or an 80GB SSD (Solid State Drive). Operating system option include Windows XP, XP Professional as well as SUSE Linux and possibly Vista Business.

The Intel Atom will be at the heart of the 2140 and the system can support up to 2GB of memory, the 2140 also boasts a 10.1″ screen.

All in all this looks like a very nice machine even though it will weigh slightly more than it’s plastic competition but hey, something had to give to make a quality machine. HP reckon that the 2140 will be released later this month.

You spoke and we listened, we have set up a forum for you guys to talk about tips, tweaks, hacks and everything else you want to talk about. We’ve spared no expense and bought a full vBulletin licence opposed to using an inferior forum software but remember though, at the moment it’s a blank canvas so it’s upto you guys to get the ball rolling. If you want sections added, removed or changed then just let us know.

As things progress we will be looking for moderators to keep things running smoothly.

You will find the forum at http://netbookuser.net