Without a doubt, one of the year’s hottest products, netbooks have upgraded from a geeky fad to a global craze. While sub notebooks, Ultra-Mobile PCs, and tablets have been available for some time, never before have such devices been as affordable as they are today. These units were often into the four digit price points, and featured hardware comparable to what could be in one's basement, collecting dust. But times have changed. We are beginning to see new devices, branded "netbooks", at the forefront of leading edge technology and include hardware such as solid state drives, wireless N and 45nm CPU’s smaller than a penny!

Asus is the arguably the innovator behind affordable netbooks; launching the Asus EEE in 2007. Since the release of the “Triple E”, manufacturers worldwide have joined the foray, including some rather uncommon contenders in the notebook market. Gigabyte is commonly associated as a motherboard manufacturer, or occasionally graphics cards and chassis. However, with the worldwide netbook phenomenon starting to take off, they have decided to try their hand at an affordable UMPC with a twist. The allure to mini notebooks is that the units are lightweight, powerful, functional and affordable, but upon first glance the Gigabyte M912V doesn’t appear to bring any unique developments to the market.

The M912v's physical specs are similar to most others in its category, based on the Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, sporting 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB SATA HDD and an 8.9in widescreen touch screen. Wait… touch screen? Gigabyte has entered the market with a zinger – developing one of the most affordable tablet PCs and pairing it with the netbook outline; the next closest competitor from Fujitsu has not yet been released, but is nearly identical in spec and rumored to be nearly double in price. Our article gives a report of our hands on look at the Gigabyte M912V, the latest evolution of the netbook.