More Shanzai-nanagans

The Asus Eee PCs have probably been a bit of a thorn in VIA's netbook side really. All that mighty Asus/Intel marketing, touting their little netbooks as revolutionary, while at the same time, VIA's NanoBook reference design churned out masses of similar devices in China. It's in the great PC manufacturing giant that is China that we find ourselves again today with news of an ironic turn of events, an Asus Eee PC clone which features a VIA Nano processor.

"Incidentally, the VIA Nano processor is touted to perform better than the Atom under selected circumstances, and when priced lower, it does make for an alluring replacement. No idea on whether the knockoff will sell similar to the Eee PC 1002HA's price range, but we're probably looking at something more wallet-friendly."

VIA Nano in Shanzai clone

A netbook that looks just like an Asus 1002H but isn't, features not only a VIA Nano processor but the VX855 chipset which makes it HD playback capable, unlike the real deal. Shanzai.com have a whole bunch of photos of the copy-cat and suggest that the VIA Surfboard platform is an attractive option for brand cloners in the China manufacturing scene, because of the 1080p support it provides.
"It's been a year now since VIA Technologies launched their GMB alliance, a project that brings together key manufacturing and infrastructure partners players in Shanzhen. The idea being that by working closely with the manufacturing base in China, VIA will see improved up take of its processors, luring the shanzhai crowd away from Intel. One of the tempters that VIA is using to achieve this is it's HD capable VIA VX855 chipset, featured on their surfboard reference design (below), a specially designed netbook mainboard that is being offered to partners in the GMB."