07 November 2008

Elonex ONE Website changed completely

There's been a sudden and complete change to http://www.elonexone.co.uk - gone is any mention of the original Elonex ONE (with its removable keyboard) - also gone is any mention of the ONE Union website. Instead the ONEt and ONEt+ are available at the original ONE prices of £99 and £119 + £10 postage.

As I've commented before, I don't think the extra 1 GigaByte of Flash memory is worth £20 - I think you would be much better off buying the plain ONEt and spending the £20 on one or more SD cards - if you have problems with the ONEt and need to "recover" the original installation you'll need an SD card as that's the only place you can install a Recovery image from - with a bit of shopping around you can also get a 4 GigaByte SD card for under £20.

There's confirmation on the Maplin website that 4 GigaBytes is the maximum supported SD or USB memory size. Maplin have the ONEt+ equivalent "minibook" available at £139.99 including postage, plus some "B grade stock" at £119.99 - with the advantage that these machines are in stock now rather than having to wait until Christmas.

So, will the original ONE or a variant reappear later at a lower price or from a different supplier? Or are we now limited to the ONEt(+)? I would like to see the ONE back again, for its 486 compatibility, range of available software and 256 MegaByte RAM...