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First Full Review of New Asus Eee PC 900
An anonymous reader writes "After months of rumors, the new 8.9in screen Eee PC is out in the open and the first review is online. As well as the larger screen you get 1GB RAM, 20GB Storage and a multi-touch touchpad. It costs more than the old Eee PC, but it definitely sounds like it's worth the extra cash." I always thought the appeal of the original was the ridiculously low price, coupled with the ease of hacking. Not sure if the sequel will meet that challenge.
They all seem to have pretty close pricing, for example the HP's 2133:
... anywhere from a $499 system running Linux to a $749 model using Microsoft's Windows Vista Business operating system. The low-end Linux version, which sports a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM--is probably the closest matchup for the Eee. The Vista machine we review here today sits at the top-end with a 1.6GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM. I'm glad to see healthy competition in this market. I know some people are going to hate the non-standard stuff going on with these laptops and there's going to be some dirty tactics to 'lock-in' countries to purchase only a certain brand for schools (*cough* Intel/Microsoft *cough*) but these prices are going to continue to be driven down. Which from $400-$500 is a great price!While it may not be the year of Linux on the desktop, it's certainly the year of Linux on the super freaking tiny notebook that is difficult to type on (yes, I know what a USB keyboard is).
My work here is dung.
The whole point is that it's so small, hence "ultraportable".
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
It would be nice if the apple lawyers got all riled up about it, and it got enough attention that everyone new any company claiming sole rights to something so obvious should be slapped upside the head. Even better would be if this slapping actually took place in court so no one else would have to worry about apple bothering them over something so idiotic.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You can get a full-sized laptop with twice the ram, more than 10x the storage, a bigger screen, etc., for under $500.00
I dare say you have completely missed the point of this device. The whole point is that it's not "full-sized".
I agree, theoretically the appeal of a device like this is that you can flip it open any time you need it, and riggity-jig-and-away-you-go.
On the other hand, how many people are buying this as a full time alternative to a full sized laptop?
I think we're still in the early adopter stage -- where most of the people who are buying it are just curious. Therefore it may be more important to meet certain psychological pricing benchmarks (e.g. it's closer to 300 Euros than 400) than it is to put a bigger battery in it. Then the people who find it seriously useful will buy a second battery, or a larger aftermarket battery.
Admit it; you've bought things on impulse for X dollars, then on impulse bought a Y dollar ugprade for those things, even though you probably wouldn't consider paying X + Y for the entire rig and it was just wishful thinking you didn't need the upgrade. That normal economic behavior for early adopters.
When the thing gets to the point where pragmatists are buying them, you can bet they'll sport much longer battery lives. Just the volumes they'll be buying parts in will bring the price down to stay "cheap".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In their defence (god I never thought id defend America), taking a laptop to work/uni etc isnt that bad, but if you start going about a normal day, shopping, going to a mates houses, etc.
And the size is a real winner, I for one have to carry a whole load of other crap about with me, and I have to carry it on the tube at rush-hour.
That said, I've not got one and Im not going to die from caring the standard laptop either. This model is capable of being a good replacement to a laptop, but with such a small screen i think ill keep my crappy laptop.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Sorry, but I've USED Windows CE before.
I know just how terribly unresponsively it performs.
I know how terribly limited the selection of available software is
I know how crippled all the "pocket" apps are.
I know just how completely lacking external hardware drivers (eg. printers) are.
If you need more than something that just barely lets you type basic documents and sync them with your desktop, WinCE is a lame duck.
The HPC form-factor is quite nice, but the realities of using one for any length of time is not so pleasant.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Sounds to me more like Microsoft "requested" they don't sell the Linux version any cheaper than the XP version. Making two models of the hardware doesn't make much sense otherwise.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
While I'm not American, I will say that an extra 3kg or so is an inconvenience compared to just under 1kg. It's not as if we're all suddenly lacking the muscle mass to carry a 15" machine or that we're so lazy we don't want to expend the extra energy, it's that if you want a machine with you all the time then it will get irritating to carry the larger one - the smaller and lighter the machine, the more likely it is to become something you carry everywhere and thus have whenever you need it (or, to put it another way, if you know you're going to potentially need a laptop at any time while you're out, the eee is going to get much less annoying to carry all day every day).
And... is that allowed by the EULA? (No, I haven't read it)
So say we all
Ya, but that is the price they paid to partner with Intel. Find a subnote that gets good battery life and it will be a marketing lie. i.e. either it WON'T actually run over three hours OR it isn't a subnote anymore after they strap the hi-cap battery to it's ass.
If they wanted battery life they should have ditched the Intel Inside sticker and stuck an ARM in, even one fabbed by Intel. Escept for leaning really hard on Adobe to give them a Flash Player port everything else they shipped on the original eeepc would have rebuilt with few problems.
This one has some things going for it, although the original WOW feature in the first product announcement for me last year was that $200 pricetag. I said at the time that smelled of bait and switch, looks like I was right. Can't argue too much though since they are selling every unit they can build and ship at these higher prices for now. Perhaps they will go for the low end of the market when production capacity catches up to demand. Or perhaps they will leave that segment for someone else.
The best reason to go after the $250 market is that with luck we won't get bait/switched on Linux. Oh course we now know that the real price a large OEM pays for Windows is about the same as the wholesale price of a single 8GB flash chip.
Democrat delenda est
Not only would a 300GB hard drive make the unit larger and reduce battery time significantly, it would also double the cost of the unit.
For something like the Eee, I think flash is entirely appropriate, and 20GB is a good bunch of storage for a small machine like this.
If you need the 300GB, you could get a USB powered external disk and plug it in to watch your seasons on the go.
Not every product is going to be perfect for everyone, and your claim of trading 512MB RAM for a huge ass hard disk doesn't jive with this product.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Who'd have thought that one company actually *doing* something could evangelize linux better than a million geeks screaming at each other through the ether...
All it needs now is for *one* major game developer to port their games to linux and "Linux on the Desktop" might cease to be an oxymoron. (valve is the obvious one for me. They're obviously not going to port every game, but with steam you would get to see all they have at once.) Of course it would kill some people to use a closed source app on their shiny OS OS, but with ubunutu pulling people (particularly teens) in from the mainstream, their injection of open-mindedness might make it a viable business model now where it wasn't 3 years ago.