Eee PC 900 To Hit Shelves in Mid-May for $549. Is It Still Low-Cost?
April 20th, 2008 by Joanna Stern 
Good news American patriots: The long awaited ASUS Eee PC 900 sporting a 8.9-inch screen and a multi-touch FingerGlide track pad will make its US retail appearence on May 12. Both the Linux Xandros and Windows XP versions will we sold for $549. See the full specs here.
The new system, which strays from the original $399 price point, will sport a bigger screen with a higher resolution, an improved 1.3-mega pixel webcam, and a multi-touch track pad. That gives you a lot more comfort for your money but the new system, which is $150 more than the original, still contains the same Intel Celeron M processor. When we spoke to ASUS CEO Jerry Shen a few months back he predicted the 900 system would retail for about $499. I would say the inclusion of an Atom processor would justify the increase to $549, but do the new specs?
Does the new system take the Eee PC out of its original low-cost category? You can get plenty of decent systems for under $600, take this ThinkPad R61e for $577. Sure, the ThinkPad is bigger but you get loads more horsepower and hard drive space for your money. Which comes to our age old question: do you like the Eee PC because of its size or because of its price point?
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4 Responses to “Eee PC 900 To Hit Shelves in Mid-May for $549. Is It Still Low-Cost?”
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April 20th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
No matter what is in the box, 500$ is the upper limit in the ultra-portable category. HP realized this, but Asus makes a big mistake with EEE 900.
Even the EEE 701 Surf for 300$ is powerful enough for what it is made for: browsing, email, chat, voip, wordprocessing , basic office tasks, etc. It only lacks the 9″ display.
In Europe the situation is worse because of Euro based pricing.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 am
Too unfortunate. $549 is too high for the machine. I was waiting for this one to come out, but now I will end up buying a regular laptop.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Low price,
, it is cheap for students
April 24th, 2008 at 5:25 am
I think it’s worth waiting for the 10″ version
http://eeepc.itrunsonlinux.com/the-news/1-latest-news/63-asus-will-launch-an-eee-pc-with-10-inch-screen
Especially if you already own a PC 701, this seems more value for your hard earned cash & it will also feature the Atom (which should consume less power)
I’m a happy PC 701 user & I’m only thinking about upgrading if the 10″ version would cost me about 400 Euros.