DailyTech - ECS Guns for Eee PC 900 With Sub-$500 G10IL Notebook

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Gadgets ECS Guns for Eee PC 900 With Sub-$500 G10IL Notebook
Brandon Hill (Blog) - March 6, 2008 10:35 AM

24 comment(s) - last by Obsoleet.. on Mar 10 at 8:01 PM

ECS G10IL (Source: Pocket-lint)

(Source: Pocket-lint)

ECS shows off 11" notebook with HSDPA

ASUS made headlines around the globe earlier this week with the 8.9" Eee PC 900 at CeBIT. The second generation Eee PC improves upon its predecessor with a higher resolution screen, larger trackpad, more storage/memory and hopefully a faster/more power efficient processor.

ASUS-rival ECS is tired of letting the Eee PC hog the spotlight in the sub-$500 price range and today showed off its 11" G10IL sub-notebook. Hard specifications for the device (processor, chipsets, memory, storage capacity/type, etc.) were not revealed, but we do know that the G10IL will come with three USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, VGA connection, 56k modem and built-in HSDPA 7.2.

Although it wasn't mentioned, 802.11a/g support is a given and Bluetooth connectivity is likely for the production model. As with the Eee PC 401/Eee PC 900, no optical drive is included with the ECS G10IL.

It should be interesting to see what processor platform ECS chooses to power the G10IL. The notebook appears to be pretty feature-packed for the sub-$500 price point, so one would likely point towards a VIA-based platform for cost reasons.

However, Intel's new Atom processor and Centrino Atom platform could give VIA a run for the money in pricing and power efficiency. Regardless of which processing platform ECS chooses, we'll keep you informed with the latest details.

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ECS..........really?

By Bigjee on 3/6/2008 1:06:26 PM , Rating: 2

I don't know what most people think of ECS but I think the company's reputation is far from stellar. I came across some motherboards produced by this company and they were a heap of junk. I wouldn't be trusting them with a laptop anytime soon, not at least until the reviews are out and buyers are satisfied.

RE: ECS..........really?

By DASQ on 3/6/2008 1:24:37 PM , Rating: 2

Their "commercial" lines of motherboards have been pretty plain, but cheap. They are a massive supplier of OEM motherboards, fourth or fifth supplier of motherboards overall in the world (can't recall at the moment).

They're one of the best people to put out a cheap laptop like this.

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RE: ECS..........really?

By hans007 on 3/6/2008 3:24:18 PM , Rating: 3

ECS is actually the 2nd largest supplier of boards, and barely 2nd to asus at that.

they actually manufacture some of the smaller outfits boards sometimes (companies like asus, and even gigabyte).

i think the reason most "techies" hate ecs is that they have a bad reputation in retail motherboards from the athlon xp days with the first generation of ECS k7s5a and such.

That said, they are basically another giant manufactuerer like foxconn, just they did a really bad job at first, whereas foxconn makes plain boards now and never had a bunch of bad ones.

i have not heard of a bunch of bad ECS boards since those athlon xp days which was 5-6 years ago so I think in general their stuff is just as good as anything else now.

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RE: ECS..........really?

By phaxmohdem on 3/6/2008 4:19:43 PM , Rating: 2

I still have a K7S5A board happily crunching away in my render farm.

I've never had a problem with ECS boards (Though I've only owned 3 K7S5A's to be honest) But for a new system build, I definitely wouldn't rely on one for my main rig anymore. Asus or Gigabyte get my "main-rig" business these days. Even for budget builds, I would honestly probably rather go MSI than ECS.

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RE: ECS..........really?

By Samus on 3/7/2008 2:17:08 AM , Rating: 2

K7S5A's were fantastic boards. It still amazes me the one in my parents computer works to this day with an old Athlon XP 1900+ and a gig of DDR266

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RE: ECS..........really?

By Obsoleet on 3/10/2008 8:01:59 PM , Rating: 2

The earlier revisions of those boards weren't fantastic at all. I had one and encountered issues based in the info contained below.
http://www.geek.com/k7s5a-based-system-instability...

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RE: ECS..........really?

By A5un on 3/6/2008 3:36:13 PM , Rating: 2

I think they've really increased the reliability of their products quite significantly. For users who just want a stable, cheap, kinda fast system, ECS boards are good enough. But, like you said, I wouldn't buy one until I see a review - a long term review too.

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RE: ECS..........really?

By sgtdisturbed47 on 3/6/2008 3:53:56 PM , Rating: 2

Well, ECS is a budget brand, no doubt about it, but some of their mobos have been OK and have lasted. I would have to say that I trust ECS more than Foxconn, but not by much. I've been more of an Asus and Gigabyte fan due to reliability and performance (with overclocking and gaming), so I would love to get my hands on a larger screen Asus Eee laptop when/if they release a larger screen model, if they already haven't.

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