Latest Cloudbook availability details

Paul Kim, U.S. head of marketing at Everex, must be a very busy guy right now. But he found time to send me an update on CloudBook availability on Friday night. Here's the list:

ZaReason - had them since Friday morning. "ZaReason sent a van over the other day and grabbed their units while the Wal-Mart pallets were being loaded," wrote Kim by e-mail. ZaReason's Berkeley offices are just 30 miles or so from Everex's U.S. headquarters in Fremont. However, ZaReason has such a backlog of pre-orders that anyone going to order now from them will still have to wait.

Also, the story of how ZaReason was able to get its units first is much more complicated and interesting than what Kim says above. See their account here.

WalMart.com - available February 21. No word from Kim if Wal-Mart stores will have 'em at the same time (but doubtful, as that involves even more shipping).

NewEgg.com - "first week of March," wrote Kim.

TigerDirect.com - ditto, according to Kim. Unclear whether that includes CompUSA, which was bought by TigerDirect's parent company. Kim had told me earlier that CompUSA stores re-opened after the bankruptcy sales finish could be a channel for Everex goods.

But here's the most tantalizing bit of news: Kim said that "two other major retailers are in negotiation" on carrying the CloudBook, "but we haven't agreed on financial terms yet."

As for the many niggling issues Laptop magazine had during its CloudBook review, Kim said he was meeting with David Liu, head of the CloudBook's Linux maker, gOS, yesterday. He did admit that the "the first lot (including press samples)" of CloudBooks had problems with desktop windows larger than the Cloudbook's actual 800x480 screen.

That means even if you're forced to wait several days or weeks for your CloudBook, it may turn out to be a good thing. No public word from ZaReason, which says it helped Everex with customizing the Linux software on the CloudBook, will be providing fixes to customers who get Cloudbooks from the first, buggy batch.