Jointech JL7100 - $99 Asus Eee PC Clone

Hongkong-based Jointech has announced its USD99 JL7100, an Asus Eee PC look-alike but which uses Windows CE instead of Windows XP or Xandros. Windows CE is typically used in PDAs and smartphones and has limited functionalities relative to the full-blown desktop operating systems.

The choice of Windows CE also means the JL7100 need not be as fully featured also. While it comes with the ubiquitous 7" 800 x 480 LCD (thought 64K colors only), it has only 64MB internal storage - clearly not enough if you deal with a lot of multimedia files.

It also has only 64MB RAM - it might be enough to run the built-in apps but certainly not other programs, assuming you can install third-party apps.

As for the built-in apps, you only get viewer versions of MS Word, MS Excel, and MS Powerpoint. It would have been infinitely useful if Jointech had included versions that allow editing.

Moreover it does not have any built-in wireless capabilities, although it ostensibly supports this via USB ports. Neither does it have any memory card slot. So again, you can only expand storage via the USB ports.

Put simply, the JL7100 is basically a Windows-based PDA pretending to be a subnotebook. As to whether it will appeal to consumers, that would be a matter of personal taste. But given that you will need to buy a USB wifi dongle plus upgrade the RAM and internal storage if you want to do any surfing, you will end up spending somewhere near Asus Eee PC 2G Surf pricing territory. At that point, you are better off buying the real thing.

Now if all you need is a PDA, you would do a lot better with one of those PMP (Personal Media Player)/PDAs flooding the market today. Unless you need a QWERTY keyboard, that is. But then that would assume you will be doing a lot of typing, something which the JL7100 does not expect you to, given that its "Office" apps are all limited to viewing documents only.

Specs:

Weight : 680g (Including Battery)

Operating System - Win CE 5.0

Memory

Chipset: Samsung
Internal Storage: 64MB
External: Optional via USB 1-8GB
Ram: 64MB
USB ports: 3

Supported Software

MS Word Viewer
MS Excel Viewer
MS Powerpoint Viewer
MSN Messenger
Media Player
Image Viewer
Wordpad
PDF Viewer
Calculator
Paint
Internet Explorer

Dimensions: 225 x 165 x 36 (mm)

LCD: 7" 800 x 480 TFT 64K colors

Casing: Black / Pink / White / Skyblue

Power: 7.4v

Touchpad

Speaker: Stereo Speaker

Battery Type: LiOn, 4 hr charging, 4-72 hrs (standby)

Multimedia Support

Audio: MP3, WMA, WAV and others
Video: AVI and others
Recording: WAV
Images: BMP, JPG, GIF and others

Product Page here.