Firstly, there's an interesting (and somewhat typically shanzhai) issue I want to quickly resolve. There is some debate surrounding this company's (and therefore the product's) name. Should the Romanized version of the Chinese name be 'Cool Rui', or 'Cooorui'? To my mind, a debate most centered around the difficulty native Chinese speakers have in producing a final 'l' consonant sound. Despite the company using the URL cooorui.com, I'm going out on a limb and referring to them as Cool Rui, a) because it's makes so much more sense to English speakers, and b) because in the Chinese, the character used actually means 'cool'.





The Cool Rui X9 has a 10.2 inch touch screen with a reasonably decent 1024 x 600 pixel resolution, and is purportedly both dust, scratch and fire resistant. I'll leave you all to discuss the relative merits of a flame retardant display - could be good for smokers, fire fighters, the devil himself? - but the bottom line is that it has some kind of protective layer, which is good news, especially in avoiding scratches and smears. More on that later.





The CPU inside is an Intel Atom N270 paired with it's ever-present 945GS chipset. The netbook-class specs are completed with 1GB of DDR2, a 160GB hard drive, Ethernet, Card reader and three USBs etc. I have some minor concerns about the silicon getting rather hot in a device this thin (24.7mm), pondering whether it would be better served with a Poulsbro chip and a Z Series Atom processor which  would no doubt also offer longer operating time on its choice of 2800mAh  or 3500mAh battery. Connectivity is augmented with 3G support via a SIM card slot, while the ubiquitous 1.3 mega-pixel camera is also thrown in. Dimensions are 226.3mm x 166.9mm x 24.7mm, weight is just under 1Kg including battery, presumably the smaller version.





Western Opportunity Analysis: