Its been a long an rocky road for the reference design of this device that we saw rebranded many times. Long though it may have been, the “The Everex / Packard Bell / FIC Nanobook / Cloudbook / CE26″ as Engadget calls it has arrived. I don’t have any issues waiting for a new piece of technology as long as its been evolving and improving, and I think that is exactly what the Cloudbook has done.

Why is it called the Cloudbook? The operating system is called Linux gOS “Rocket” which is a very low specification requiring OS that replaces many of its default applications with online apps which are sometimes referred to as residing “in the cloud”, hence the Cloudbook title. The operating system relies heavily on the Google Suite (Reader, Docs, Calendar, etcetera). The Cloudbook can be viewed as a direct competitor to the Eee PC based on many factors such as size, specs, and most importantly price. Here are the specs of the Cloudbook right next to the equally priced 4G Eee PC.

The Cloudbook wins in a few areas and ties in the rest. While flash based storage is definitely faster, I think most of us would take a 30GB HDD over a 4GB SSD. The Cloudbooks biggest ally in overtaking the Eee PC may be in its distribution partner… Walmart. As the worlds largest corporation by revenue, Walmart is a great place to help the Cloudbook get exposed to its target audience (casual PC users) who have probably never heard of an Eee PC. The only problem I see is that an operating system supplemented with online applications probably isn’t the most user friendly, so casual users who pick this up may put it down just as quickly. Whereas the Eee PC’s OS is specifically targeted at engaging first time or casual PC users.