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Is there a trend developing for the resurrection of affectionately-held computing brands? First it was Commodore, which just last month was reborn as a manufacturer of netbooks. And now Apricot, which has just been reborn as, yes – a manufacturer of netbooks.

The revived company’s first offering is the PicoBook Pro, a netbook with an 8.9in screen, 1GB of RAM, 60GB hard disk drive and 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi and powered by a 1.2GHz Via C7-M processor. The price? £279 including VAT for the Linux edition, with XP available at "additional cost".

A bunch of additional pictures and the full press release after the cut. Read the latter, incidentally, and you’ll note that the chap behind the new Apricot is a one Shahid Sultan. Who he? Well, he's worth Googling – try adding "Acorn" to the search, too. 

Retro gamers will have been following the rebirth of Commodore as a PC-gaming slash Wi-Fi multimedia player brand with interest but now the never-say-die name is branching out once more with its own UMPC (heck, why not?) called the UMMD 8010/F Netbook. Insert tape and type LOAD for more.

More details have emerged on HP's new Mini Note line-up. As we reported last month, the PC giant is busily working on updates to best-selling UMPC and the latest indications that they will indeed use Intel's Atom chips rather than its current, underpowered VIA processor.

Digitimes reports that the new line-up will be here by October - the main hold up being an apparent shortage of 10in screens. The only other details are that there'll be a choice between traditional and SSD storage and a peculiar display resolution of 1024x576, which could be a typo. Who knows?

[Digitimes]

The performance of its C7 chip may have been one of the crushing disappointments with the HP 2133 Mini-Note, but VIA is keen to let everyone know that its mobile processor plans don’t end there. It announced the Nano processor earlier this year (under the guise of ‘Isaiah’) and now VIA is showing off the performance of its latest low-power processor.

VIA has released a video that shows one of its OpenBook (VIA’s low-cost open source ultraportable reference design) playing 1080p HD video alongside an Asus Eee PC 1000. The 1.3GHz Nano chip in the Minibook visibly out-performs the 1.6GHz Intel Atom in the Eee PC – but this being a VIA video, it would, wouldn’t it..?

If anyone had asked us to name a laptop manufacturer capable of producing a credible alternative to the Eee PC, the letters “HP” wouldn’t have been the first to trip from our lips. And yet here it is with the 2133 Mini-Note – the first low-cost ultraportable we’ve seen that to look more like a serious business tool rather than a novelty learning aid.

And there’s no ignoring the 2133 Mini-Note’s looks – it is absolutely gorgeous. Asus and Packard Bell may prefer cheap-looking plastic for their low-cost laptops, but not HP. The 2133 Mini-Note is clad in a sleek brushed aluminium case that looks and feels like a million dollars.

Taiwanese PC component manufacturer VIA has made the reference design for its OpenBook Mini-Note ultraportable laptop available as a free open source download.

According to the press release, VIA is hoping that making its designed freely available will fuel the growing low-cost ultraportable market, which is no bad thing given the huge amount of interest in laptops like the Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind.More information and lots more images after the cut. 

The Asus Eee PC 900 has a challenger in the shape of the newly announced Everex CloudBook Max, unveiled at CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas. It's an update to the US version of our Packard Bell EasyNote XS and boasts an 8.9in 1024x600 screen, WiMAX and a new multi-skilled chipset courtesy of VIA that makes it 'Vista capable'. More info and images after the cut.

The newest low-cost ultra-portable has just arrived in the Mobile Computer office - the Packard Bell EasyNote XS. This is based on the VIA NanoBook that was announced at Computex earlier this year, which was supposedly an ultra-portable that would compete with the (now) £220 ASUS Eee PC.

The good news is that hardware-wise, the EasyNote XS looks like a worthy contender to the Eee PC. The bad news is that it's being sold through PC World at a ridiculous £500 and not the (still overpriced) £350 it was originally pitched at. More after the jump.

OQO formally announced the Model e2 UMPC today, the first of its range to be available in Europe. Although it has about the same desktop footprint as a postcard when closed, the e2 runs either Windows XP or Vista and is powered by a Via C7-M processor (1.5GHz or 1.6GHz) with 1Gb of RAM and with a variety of hard disks and SSD drives.