Yeah, so the much-touted ‘flood’ of ARM netbooks on to store shelves has barely materialised as a drip, with the drop in demand for netbooks (and a growth spurt in touchscreen tablets) said to be diverting attention elsewhere.

PC company Hercules is pinning its hopes on a better late than never approach with the launch of their new ARM powered netbook series dubbed the eCafé.

eCafe Hercules ARM netbook running UbuntuThe 10-inch eCafé netbook is sold in 2 flavours: –

  • Slim white model weighing just 880g
  • Heavier black model with 13 hours battery life and HDMI out

Both boast the same core hardware specs:

  • 800Mhz ARM Cortex A8 (Freescale i.MX515)
  • 512MB RAM
  • 8GB Flash Storage

Also shared is the same chiclet keyboard, 8GB of flash storage, HDMI out, 3 USB ports an, SD card reader, 3.5mm audio jack, built-in Wi-Fi, ethernet port, and some bizarre touch-controls on the ‘arms’ of the device for adjusting media playback.

The operating system used on the eCafe device is a modified version of Ubuntu 10.07 (yes, 10.07) for ARM devices, running the EFL-based Netbook Launcher UI.

The eCafe models start at £179 on Amazon UK. International availability will follow.

Want to see it in action? Click play on the official promo video below:

Performance

Without a device in my hands to put through its paces I can’t attest to the performance or power of the eCafé netbook series.

The choice of an relatively antiquated i.MX515 processor – launched in 2009 – would make me hesitant to purchase, particularly as reviews of the Toshiba’s AC100-AU, which shipped with Android, were lukewarm at best – and that came with a dual core 1Ghz Tegra A9 chip!

We’ve certainly seen more powerful ARM portables hinted shown off before – such as this 2GHz 14″ beauty shown off at CES earlier this year.

But the eCafé’s, as small and meek as they seem, are said to handle 1080p video playback, web browsing, office documents and other everyday tasks with ease. And that’s without mentioning the long battery life, claimed 14 day standby, lightweight build and general portability.

The question is: would you buy one?