Published on 09/27/2007

First Asus EEE PC notebooks

The first Asus EEE PC notebooks will ship to the United States in late September and will be priced from $269 to $399, according to the source at Asustek North America, whose statement was posted at Eeeuser’s forum.

The specs the Asus Eee offers:

Display: 7"
Processor: Intel mobile CPU (Intel 910 chipset, 900MHz Dothan Pentium M)
Memory: 512MB RAM
OS: Linux (Asus customized flavor)
Storage: 8GB or 16GB flash hard drive
Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
Battery life: 3 hours using 4-cell battery
Weight: 2lbs
Dimensions: 8.9 in x 6.5 in x 0.82 in - 1.37 in (width x depth x thickness)
Ports: 3 USB ports, 1 VGA out, SD card reader, modem, Ethernet, headphone out, microphone in

The source says there will be the EEE PC $269-$299 configuration with a 7-inch display, 512MB of system memory, 2GB of Flash memory-based storage, and a wireless connection. There will be options of four-cell or six-cell batteries. The startup time for the Eee is about 10 seconds, and that's when it's being slow. Shutdown is performed with the simple one click of an "off" icon in the lower right hand of the screen (this "off" graphic is always present) and the total shutdown time is a whopping 5 seconds. We've all been ruined by slow hard drives and a bloated Windows OS I know, but I felt kind of giddy with glee seeing such fast startup and shutdown.

The initially announced $199 Asus EEE PC configuration, which has “the smaller two hour only battery”, will not be sold in the U.S. reportedly. On the other side, there will be $369-399 version for the USA market with the same specifications as $269-$299 configuration, except the increased storage to 4GB. Although the source in North American Asustek says these small and affordable laptops will be available in the US in late September, the information poster feels it will more probably be in October. The Asus Eee uses a Linux based OS that Asus has customized themselves. Combine a small Linux footprint OS with a flash based hard drive and what results is this speedy startup that the device has. Just because the OS is light doesn't mean it doesn't do much. There's a ton of software features on board that will most definitely serve all of your basic needs.

You can browse the web using FireFox, use Skype with the built-in web cam and microphone, open Word and Excel docs and edit them, view photos, listen to music files, use AOL IM, MSN messenger or just about any other major chat client via Kopete. In other words, all the basic functions you perform on a PC you can do on the Eee PC.

First Asus EEE PC notebooks II

The keyboard is definitely small and takes some getting used to, I initially found that pecking at keys was faster than doing a normal style fast type. It's just hard not to fat finger the wrong key or two keys at once, even if you have medium sized fingers. The keyboard also had a bit of rattle and shake to it, but it definitely worked for getting the job done. Nobody will use this as their main PC, but if you're at Starbucks and want to surf the web and crank out a few emails, the keyboard is absolutely serviceable for that. I wouldn't write my disseration or anything on it though, you're just asking for carpal tunnel by doing that.

The touchpad worked fine and the single button mouse was easy enough to use, there's no need for a right mouse button in this software environment.

Ports and Features

SD card slot, 2 USB hubs, VGA out

Ethernet, Modem, USB port and then headphone and microphone jack

Asus had initially said that the Eee PC would start at $199, but they're thinking now is more like $250 for the 8GB flash drive version and somewhat more for a 16GB version. They're still looking at late August for availability of the device, and it should be offered world-wide. I hope Asus can do a good job in making this device widely available, it's really quite compelling for the price and it will be interesting to see what type of people look to buy this.