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ASUS Eee PC 901  (Source: blogeee.net)

ASUS Eee Box  (Source: AnandTech)

  (Source: AnandTech)

  (Source: AnandTech)
ASUS plans to announce two new Eee notebooks and an Eee desktop at Computex

ASUS is gearing up to expand its Eee family during Computex. ASUS already wowed consumers and online critics with the original Eee PC 701 4G. In the months following its release, the company introduced new models to occupy price points below and above the original entry – but still didn’t come close to the original $199 vision.

ASUS recently launched the follow-up to the original Eee PC with the $549 Eee PC 900. Although the underlying hardware didn't change much, ASUS did increase the screen size from 7" to 8.9" and increased the screen resolution from 800x400 to a more palatable 1024x600. Internal storage also increased from a maximum of 8GB on the Eee PC 8G to 20GB for the Linux variant of the Eee PC 900.

With pressure now mounting from the like of MSI with its low-cost Wind notebook and Wind desktop, ASUS is ready to launch another salvo on the buying public and its competition.

The first of the new wave of products includes the new Eee PC 901. While the Eee PC 900 looked like a slightly enlarged Eee PC 701, the Eee PC 901 features an all-new exterior with chrome detailing to spice things up a bit and Bluetooth. It also includes Intel's new 1.6GHz Atom processor (Diamondville) -- which features simultaneous multithreading (SMT) -- and the Intel 945G chipset.

Next up is the Eee PC 1000. As the name implies, this unit will feature a 10" screen to do battle with the equally large unit featured on the MSI Wind and presumably a larger keyboard to match – a move that is sure to silence current Eee critics. Not much else is known about the specifications of this unit other than the fact that it will use the same Atom processor found on the Eee PC 901.

The final piece to the Eee puzzle is the Eee Box; which AnandTech has already dissected in preparation for a full review. ASUS's first Eee-branded product for the desktop market will also feature an Atom processor (of unknown core clock frequency), 2GB of DDR2 memory, and an Intel 945G chipset. Unlike its notebook counterparts, however, the Eee Box will forgo solid state storage (SSD) and will use a traditional 160GB HDD.

The Eee PC 901, Eee PC 1000, and Eee Box will all be announced on June 2. The Eee PC 901 will be available in mid-June while the Eee PC 1000 is expected to make a retail appearance in July shortly after the Eee Box.

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Without pricing
By TheDiceman on 5/28/2008 5:00:16 PM , Rating: 2
Until they release some pricing information its hard to even begin to be judgemental on this expansion of the eee line.




RE: Without pricing
By shabby on 5/28/2008 5:16:40 PM , Rating: 3
If the 900 is $549, the 901 might be $599 and the 1000 might be $699...
I'll just take the msi wind.


RE: Without pricing
By drinkmorejava on 5/28/2008 5:34:14 PM , Rating: 2
Those seem to be expectable numbers. Maybe not reasonable in many ways, but they seem to follow the trend. I saw 299 for the 202 quoted somewhere, which might be right.


RE: Without pricing
By TheDiceman on 5/28/2008 5:42:27 PM , Rating: 2
I'm looking at the desktop and wondering... to really hit home on that one they need to undercut the Mac Mini.


RE: Without pricing
By elpresidente2075 on 5/28/2008 5:57:19 PM , Rating: 3
Easy! Price it below $600-800.

Oh, hey, cool! That's the plan already! ;)


RE: Without pricing
By daftrok on 5/28/2008 11:40:27 PM , Rating: 2
Or just get a small PC tower from either HP or Dell. The cool thing about it is that though they are roughly 8 times the size of the Mac Mini, they are still roughly 1/3 cubic foot in area; small enough to place behind a 19" monitor and have a hellova lot more impressive specs for a cheaper price.


RE: Without pricing
By BarkHumbug on 5/29/2008 5:12:20 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
a small PC tower from either HP or Dell


How are they on noise today? A few years back Dell's SFF sounded like a Boeing 747 taking off...


RE: Without pricing
By elpresidente2075 on 5/29/2008 4:13:36 PM , Rating: 2
When you combine "A few years back" and "Dell" in the same thought, everything's going to be bad.

Currently they're not so bad on noise, although they can be under the right thermal conditions.


RE: Without pricing
By daftrok on 5/30/2008 3:30:02 AM , Rating: 2
The HP Slimline s3400t series runs on a 180 W power supply (for comparison the Mac Mini runs on 110 W). Given the size I think that the sound shouldn't be too bad: one fan for the processor and one for the video card.


RE: Without pricing
By Captain Orgazmo on 5/30/2008 4:11:24 AM , Rating: 2
The new Pentium/Celerons have small heatsinks and very quiet fans, and you can get a fanless video card like the ATI 3450, which makes for a very quiet system. I just built one, and if it didn't have lights on the case, you wouldn't know it was running.


RE: Without pricing
By othercents on 5/28/2008 6:58:17 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If the 900 is $549, the 901 might be $599 and the 1000 might be $699... I'll just take the msi wind.

I really don't think we can speculate on pricing because who knows what ASUS is going to do with a real competitor coming to market. They should be able to tell that they will loose sales unless they start pricing everything better.

Also the Eee 901 & 1000 could be both be available with a standard hard drive which could significantly change the price of the machine. Right now people are paying a premium for the solid state drive.

Other


RE: Without pricing
By Topweasel on 5/29/2008 9:24:42 AM , Rating: 2
Yeah couldn't they just use a middle to high capacity 1.8 inch drive?


So wait... As they gradually get bigger...
By Smartless on 5/28/2008 5:02:35 PM , Rating: 2
Does that mean you'll be paying more for less? I mean most of these laptops were scraping the bare minimum to get the small form factor but will you be paying $700 for a 10" laptop with a 1.6 Ghz and 1 Gig ram with a 80 gig harddrive? Or would you rather get a 14" laptop, 1.6 Ghz and 1 gig ram with a 120 gig harddrive for $500? I guess its all going to come down to what they're going to charge.




RE: So wait... As they gradually get bigger...
By A5un on 5/28/2008 5:35:17 PM , Rating: 2
But also how heavy the laptop is.

After carrying my cheap 14" laptop around, I sometimes just want to throw it out the window cuz it's so damn heavy.


RE: So wait... As they gradually get bigger...
By FITCamaro on 5/28/2008 5:43:02 PM , Rating: 5
Go work out then. If you can't carry 5 lbs easily how the did you get through middle school and high school?

My 15.4" laptop in college was 10 lbs with the power brick (literally the size of a brick) and I had no problems. I just had a Targus backpack to tote it around in that was quite comfortable. Didn't really need to carry books so just had a few notebooks in there as well.

That all said, I'm looking at some of these nice, simple laptops solely as a machine to sit on the couch with and chat.


By Oregonian2 on 5/28/2008 7:45:18 PM , Rating: 2
And my father used to walk to school twenty miles, uphill both ways -- and through tall snow too.

Some folk also have been out of school for some time. It happens you know, really! Some of us are even more than half a century old! Imagine that! Amazing!

And we don't like tracking an extra 10 lbs around (other than around our middles).


RE: So wait... As they gradually get bigger...
By yuchai on 5/28/2008 8:05:43 PM , Rating: 2
It's not whether you CAN carry it easily but whether it's feasible for what you're doing.

For example, I went traveling for a week recently and brought my EEE PC with me. Few things I noticed:

1. Computer was good to have (for movies on train/plane rides, getting online and checking e-mail etc) but not essential (I'm on vacation). So any extra effort (carrying 5 lbs) is not worth it.
2. Carried it around with me all day in a backpack (walked 6-8 hours everyday). Barely noticed it's there. Would not have been true with regular laptop.
3. It fits in room safes, in case you do not want to carry it around.
4. It actually works better on trains/planes due to space constraints. On planes if the person before you lean back their seats you'll have problems opening up your laptop enough to see properly. On trains you might infringe on other people's table space with a regular size laptop.


RE: So wait... As they gradually get bigger...
By FITCamaro on 5/29/2008 8:44:14 AM , Rating: 2
I understand the concept of wanting smaller size because its more practical to fit in certain places. But complaining that a laptop weighs 5 pounds I don't understand. To me its like complaining that your cell phone is 6oz instead of 4.


By Topweasel on 5/29/2008 9:41:08 AM , Rating: 2
But that's also true, I choose my current phone (Krazr K1m) for its combination Thickness and width. I Don't have a special phone pocket, I don't like clips, so it has to fit comfortably in my front right pocket. If it weighed more or was wider or thicker I wouldn't have gotten it. Some people care about performance others care about efficiency and easy of use. To get the performance your talking about means people carry around nearly desktop replacements.