Early Look At ASUS Eee PC 901 With Intel Atom CPU

Might E. Mouse writes "Reviews are hitting the net for the first Intel Atom-powered netbooks, and TrustedReviews has posted one for the ASUS Eee PC 901 20G Linux Edition. Has ASUS won the Atom(ic) war before it even started? With features like Wireless-N and a 6600mAh battery good for four to seven hours, that might well be the case. TR rated it highly, but I'm going to wait for their MSI Wind review before making a purchase — their first look at the Wind showed a better keyboard and larger storage." An anonymous reader notes that despite the increased capabilities, the 901 debuts at a lower cost than its predecessor.

Comments

settling dust - I'll wait a year

[Bananatree3]

with MSI, eeePC, XO v2.0 and a host of other micronotebooks, I'm going to wait another year for it all to solidify. There's a lot of speculation right now, and I'd like to see a market tested, proven platform I can compare to all the others before I buy.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[melonman]

I can understand that, but, if you followed that logic consistently, you'd never buy a computer at all. I bought a 701, which I liked apart from the screen. Then I bought a Windows 900, on which I've installed Kubuntu, and I'm quite happy with it. It's a bit irritating that the next model is out already, but I'll be using mine on a series of train trips next week. If I had done things your way, I'd be reading magazine reviews instead of doing any work...

FOSS is working as intended

[speedtux]

If it had been up to Microsoft and Sony, we'd still be stuck with overpriced $2000 executive toys running Microsoft Vista like molasses.

FOSS has made it possible to create these machines and circumvent Microsoft's near monopoly, because if any of these companies had asked Microsoft to keep XP going for ultralights, Microsoft would have told them to go f*ck themselves. FOSS has also made it possible for these companies to design and sell $400 machines.

And the motivation for it all has not been that people begrudge Bill Gates his collection of 19th century gold plated toilet plungers, but the fact that people want choices and free markets in software and hardware. All Microsoft has to offer is a gigantic marketing budget and Stalinist central planning.

Outdated chipset

[niko9]

It worries me that the chipset consumes more power than the CPU itself. Since my
Thnkpad X40 sub note book is working just fine, I guess I'll hold off until the next revision of the Atom
platform is released and then reevaluate.

Re:Outdated chipset

[niko9]

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time?

Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about?

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time?

Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about? The difference is if Intel had mated the Atom CPU with a more apropos low power chipset you would be paying
same amount of your hard earned money for an ultra portable that had maybe 14 hours or more of battery life.

Imagine that. A sub note with close to 20 hours battery life, much like the Tandy 100.

As of now, the Intel Atom is mated to a 3-4(?) year old 945 chipset. Sounds like something was missed here.

Re:"A full school day"

[symbolset]

This works for me. If nothing better comes out in the next few weeks this or the MSI Wind is going back to school with my kids in the Fall.

It's small, cheap, light enough. It'll serve them all day. I don't have to freak out if they lose it or break it. It's got enough CPU power and memory to do real work.

I'll take one for me too. I'm tired of lugging around a full sized notebook when this is all I need. For real power and storage I can always remote to a real desktop under Citrix. For light spreadsheets and barcode scanning this will do the trick.

Sometimes I feel old...

[Kjella]

Combined with the lean and mean Linux OS, performance is snappy and responsive. With 1GB of RAM in support you can even have two or three programs open at any one time and not encounter any major problems unless you want to watch video, With one gig of RAM, you can even run two or three programs at once... Not that I long back to everything, seriously WTF it's what I ran on my desktop a few years ago and I had a lot more than that running. Looking at my memory stats 4GB is overkill and 2GB would do, and I got... 20 applications open including a virtualbox version of XP which itself runs 4 apps.

A ferrari to get to the store

[symbolset]

Impressive specifications there. Y'know, I never knew anybody that thought he needed that much computer that also knew what to do with it when he got it.