2008 has been the year for netbook madness. Ryan ordered an Acer, my friend John got an Eee PC and now HP is coming out with a new netbook that appears to be quite the offering. The Mini 1000 features a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom CPU, either a 8.9-inch or 10.2-inch display and up to 2GB of RAM. SSD is available in a 16GB drive or you can get a 60GB HDD for more storage. You can, of course, expand your storage via a USB memory stick as well.

As far as the OS goes, you can choose an Ubuntu Linux install that HP is calling the “MIE OS.” MIE stands for Mobile Internet Experience and essentially, it presents you with a bunch of commonly used apps and tasks that looks like an HP TouchSmart PC. Not bad. XP is also available for those looking to go a little more mainstream. The XP version of the Mini 1000 is available today for $399 with 512MB of RAM and an 8GB SSD with the 8.9-inch screen. For $50 more, you can score the 10.2-inch version. Look for the Linux version in early 2009.

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There are few things scarier than a politician on Halloween, except for the red ring of death. Alan Penner of Goleta, California carved a ton of tech-inspired pumpkins for his front porch. A Ubuntu pumpkin and various emoticon carvings decorate his lawn, with the red ring of death being the most frightening of all.

With all the new games coming out this holiday season for the Xbox 360, the last thing any Xbox owner needs is a red ring of death. So, let’s keep the red rings on the pumpkins and off of the 360s.

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We’ve been slowly bringing you news on Dell’s mini laptop that’s been all over the ‘net. There just wasn’t that much to talk about - until now. Dell is flipping the netbook market on its head with the Inspiron Mini 9, a $399 laptop with a 1024×600 LED-backlit screen. SSD storage will be standard with 4, 8 and 16GB options. Battery life is around three hours and you even get Windows XP. Want Linux? Shed $50 off the price tag for Ubuntu.

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At first glance, this “case mod”, if you can call it that, looked like the box I carried my belongings off to college with. Look a little deeper and you see that this box is actually a working computer.

The UbuntuBox has got to be the ugliest damn case mod of all time. Isn’t there some sort of reward for this? The creator of this horrendous masterpiece says that the computer houses the parts from an old Pentium 3 tower, running Linux Ubuntu. (more…)

Man, oh man, have we seen some kickass notebook mods in our day. It feels like it was only yesterday that I was proclaiming the iTop the coolest thing since sliced bread. This Antique notebook mod is really one for the record books.

Running off of Ubuntu (like that even matters when your computer looks like this), the Heirloom mod turns your laptop into something you might find laying around Grandpa’s attic. I’d be much more thrilled to find this then an empty cigar box filled with pins. — Andrew Dobrow

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