Hands-On With One Different Type of Netbook: the EMTEC Gdium

Everyone and their mother want to sell netbooks. Just look at companies like Coby and Viewsonic unveiling netbooks here at CES.  In their minds, creating a netbook is as simple as getting the right hardware together with a typical netbook processor (Intel Atom, VIA C7M) and then loading up Windows XP.

But EMTEC, a company better known for making USB drives, is shaking things up with its Gdium. Instead of the typical netbook specs, the Gdium doesn’t have a hard drive and boots off a USB key (called the G-Key) that plugs into the front of the netbook. G-Keys will be available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities and will come pre-packaged with the netbook.

Booting off of that USB stick won’t take you to a Windows XP operating system either. Instead you will find Gdium’s own Linux interface that is built on a Mandriva platform. We found the interface, which is a work in progress, to be really easy to follow.

The widget desktop has a large window with a tab style layout. Targeted at the education market, there are over 50 pre-loaded applications divided up into categories including, gaming and Internet. You can then put other widgets around the screen; the unit we were looking at had a picture viewer widget. Others will include a weather or email widget.

Also setting the Gdium apart is its specs. Sure it has a 10-inch 1024 x 600 resolution display and the typical netbook ports (2 USB additional USB ports in addition to the G-Key slot, SD card,  VGA Out, Ethernet, Mic and headphone) but it is powered by  900 Mhz 64bits Loongson 2F  processor and 512MB of RAM. With a 3-cell battery, the company claims that the netbook will get 4 hours of runtime.

We were impressed with this different netbook. At least until we heard that they predict a starting price of $399. For a netbook without a hard drive and lower volatage processor we were hoping to see this system in the $300 price range or even less. Hopefully EMTEC will lower the price point. Hit the video below for a detailed hands-on a very promising and non-cookie cutter netbook.

Also, Brad from Liliputing has a ton of information on the Gdium including the fact that you can put another OS on a USB stick and boot that instead.