I was handed the Elonex one in the office, looked at it and thought what a cute new addition to the subnote range especially with the review model turning up in baby pink. It made me think that if I took this one home we may loose it straight away to my partner.

Opening the box I found a small pink machine glistening in its shiny plastic exterior with a charging unit and a flimsy manual. The box wasn’t that well protective but as packaging goes I would say it was fair. I sat it on the desk top and pondered for a second what can this mini machine offer for such a low price

I opened the lid and found a 7’’ widescreen screen with speakers mounted both side and a keyboard with a glide pad below it. A silver gleaming button below the screen tempting to turn it on. I wanted to have a look around this machine first so here goes, on the right hand side of the laptop we find 2x USB ports and on the left hand side an SDCARD reader / expansion slot and a headphone and microphone port, on the rear an Power port, Ethernet port and finally a third USB port.

The feel of this machine is very plastic to the touch and the keyboard feels responsive.  Time to hit the silver button. Elonex have a custom made o/s but still definitely Linux based. It takes less than a minute to start up and you are presented with a screen with large icons on it. On its’ looks, character and presentation I would say the Elonex One has definitely been aimed at a the home / child market.

It has Wi-Fi built into it, browser capability and a messenger service that can connect to the MSNnetwork. A text book reader and e-mail system are also included, as are a few graphics applications, Abi Word for word processing and a couple of utilities. On using the device I find it has been designed with adequate technology to perform all of these functions quite easily. With 1GB of storage memory it has approximately 680mb free when the machine is first taken from the box. Storage expansions is via the SD slot even though I docked a 400gb external hard drive onto the machine and found it read the file structure immediately.

After using the machine for a few days I find the Elonex one has one main problem, the Wi-Fi technology is really problematic. On taking the portable subnote to various locations I find the Wi-Fi connection can see the connections but cannot connect, the card Elonex have chosen seems to be very temperamental, I have found that using DHCP will ensure a constant connection to most of the network stations.

After these findings I though I would take the Elonex home and see the reactions of the family, immediately upon walking in the door the Elonex was eyed up by my partner and daughter. After leaving it with the household for a couple of days I thought I would try and remove it. This seems to be the place it was designed for, as the Elonex was extremely difficult to remove. Everyone’s opinions were it was simplistic to use and once the Wi-Fi had become stable they were all happy with its performance. It is light and user friendly.

Pidgin (the messaging system) did a good job of keeping them in touch with friends but there was a few comments that the MSN messenger was certainly missed.

There are many machines out there in the world to purchase. This one is certainly a home user machine mainly aimed at giving children access to laptop technology without it saying Mattel. But to be fair if it’s for browsing or just basic functionality, at around £120 its seems a little bargain.

Links:

Elonex technical support

http://www.elonex.co.uk/support/support.shtm

Unofficial user site

http://elonexone.org.uk/

Where to buy

one+t laptop bundle - pink -£179.00 – Littlewoods

ELONEX BOOK-PC - £120.00 - eBay

one+T laptop bundle - white - £179.00 - Great Universal

Marshall Ward - £149

What we think is exactly the same machine under a different brand…

CnM Lifestyle electronics - http://www.cnmlifestyle.com/

Which has more technical support

And can be bought from...

Maplin - £139.99

with the support this one might be of use to certain client groups