Elonex webbook: Free mini laptop at Carphone Warehouse

Just when you thought the mini laptop market couldn't get any more saturated, along comes Elonex with yet another miniature machine. No, it's not the Elonex One, which we reported on a few months ago, this one's an all-new gizmo called the Elonex webbook. We imagine that's pronounced 'Web book', not 'webbuck', but we'll leave that up to you.

It's becoming increasingly easy to dismiss these things as Eee PC copycats, but the webbook looks good in its own right. It uses a 10.2-inch display, which we're guessing runs at the same 1,024x600-pixel resolution as the MSI Wind -- and like most of these things, it'll ship in both Linux and Windows XP versions.

It'll ship with Wi-Fi, three USB ports, an unnamed 1.6GHz processor -- probably either the Via C7M or Atom N270 -- and it'll only weigh 1.3kg, so you can toss it into a hand or manbag with the minimum of effort.

You'll be able to buy the webbook from the Carphone Warehouse as a standalone unit, or get it for 'free' as part of a broadband package -- details of which will be confirmed shortly. Pricing is still TBC, but we can tell you it'll be launched in the middle of June. That's this month, people!

We're hoping to get one in next week, so we'll have a full hands-on then. -Rory Reid