Asus Eee PC

The leaked slide of the new Eee PC models was a glimpse into the additional models that ASUS would release. And the 701SD on the bottom of the pyramid was eye grabbing. It begged the question: What will ASUS do to revive its original 7-inch form?

Well these new pictures that have emerged give us a good idea. From the looks of it, the Eee PC 701SD will be built in a similar chassis to the 901 but lacks the rounded edges. The lid has the new Eee logo in the top right corner and is covered in a black and white matte finish.

The touchpad button has a divot separating the right and left click button, which if you recall, the original 701 did not. Other than that, the keyboard looks to be the same as the original.

According to this leaked ASUS Eee PC roadmap slide, there are a few 701 SDs expected: 701, 701SD(30G HDD), 701SD, 701SD-4G. Interesting that one will sport a 30GB The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.
Learn Morehard drive considering its SD tagged name. We don’t know any more about specs, other than that we are expecting it to run Intel Atom.

We have got lots of pictures in our gallery below. Did we miss any details?

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According to our buds JKKMobile and Kevin O’Brien over at Notebook Review, Vista running on Intel Atom powered mini-notebooks isn’t only not bad, it works like a charm. In fact Kevin proved that installing Vista on the MSI Wind made it faster; benchmarks, such as WPrime, were higher in Vista over XP.

Vista better than XP on a mini-notebook? Puzzling? Yep. I had to see it to believe it. So loading Vista Home Premium onto the Eee PC 1000H was my weekend activity.

Simple Install, Drivers Needed
Installing Windows Vista Home Premium onto the Eee PC 1000H was a breeze and took about 45 minutes. When I first went to boot the system I was, of course, missing all the necessary drivers. ASUS lays out all the necessary drivers of the 1000H on its Web site and even though they are designed for XP they each work flawlessly in Vista.

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ASUS, you crazy company, you. Not only did we hear news this week of a new ASUS Eee PC 1000HD, but it looks like some new Eee PC accessories are coming on the scene. Why not add more accessories to the seemingly already-huge Eee PC family?

We don’t have any official announcement on these and we don’t know whether they will ever come to the U.S., but these pictures, first posted by our friend Sascha at EeePCNews.de, look very legitimate.

The first accessory is an Eee PC external The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.
Learn Morehard drive (or Eee Drive). From the pictures, the black glossy square drive has an extending USB port. Perhaps this will come bundled with smaller SSD versions of the system, or it will just be an added upgrade for those have used up all their mini-notebook space.

Also appearing on the scene is an external Eee PC optical drive (or Eee Writer). Not much to say about this but it sure will help with the restore discs that ASUS provides in the Eee PC boxes.

Saving the best for last, ASUS has come up with a branded 3G connection card called the T500. The card seems to fit into a USB port.

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A couple of days ago, we interviewed Henry Kwan of ECS about the G10IL, who told us that, outside of the U.S., his company’s new mini-notebook will be sold by wireless carriers with mobile broadband in much the same way they sell phones with voice plans. Sign a long-term contract for wireless Internet and get your mini-notebook at a much lower price or even for free.

Today, our buddy James Kendrick of jkontherun has posted about a wireless provider in Japan that is giving away an Eee PC (we’re not sure which model, but it looks like a 7-inch unit) with external wireless modem for less than $1 in exchange for signing a two-year contract for wireless broadband service.

This leads us to an obvious question: would wireless-carrier-subsidized mini-notebooks sell in the U.S.?

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Our buddy Brad Linder at Liliputing spotted ASUS offering a $100 rebate on its $549 Eee PC 900s. This would bring the price of the Xandros Linux, 8.9-inch and Intel Celeron M powered mini-notebook down to $449. The rebate seems to be available right now on ZaReason.

This seems like a smart move on ASUS’ part since its 901 and 1000 series (and maybe even a 903, 904) sporting the latest Intel Atom processor will be the likely choices by consumers and retailers. Of course eventually, you will be able to get an MSI Wind for $499 and that will sport a larger 10-inch screen and the Atom processor. What this price drop doesn’t answer is if an Intel Atom Eee PC 900 is headed our way for $399.

I almost didn’t believe Liliputing’s post about a 16GB Linux Eee PC 900 hitting the market. I mean why would ASUS update its Eee PC 900 (see review here) when its 901 and 1000H are sporting Intel’s Atom processor? And why would the 900 16GB be $150 less than the original 900 20GB Linux version?

But a search of Amazon.com confirms that the Eee PC 900 running Linux will be hitting the market with an Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of space. Best part? It will finally have the $399 price point it should have had from the start.

Confused? We sure as hell are. Why is this model with 4GB less space and a faster processor be $150 less than the orginal Eee PC 900 for $549.99? We have contacted ASUS and hope they have an answer on this topic. We want answers!

If Eee mania hasn’t set in yet, it’s about to. Earlier this week pictures of the Eee PC 903, 904, and 905 were leaked. Joining these “unofficial” pictures of new Eee PCs are some shots of the Eee Monitor, or what looks to be an Eee PC all-in-one, which was first talked about by the Taiwanese company at Computex 2008.

Our ASUS rep had no specs on the monitor or availability. However, based on the photos, we’re wondering whether this is actually a monitor or a new all-in-one PC or a rip off of the iMac.

To our discerning eyes, the monitor looks to be 19 to 20 inches and has a webcam centered on top of the display. Below the screen are controls for adjusting the brightness and contrast. The right side of the display sports 2 USB ports and a card reader.

In addition to 4 USB ports, the back of the monitor is strangely equipped with two Ethernet ports, three audio ports, one for a mic, and 2 audio-outs. What we don’t see is a VGA or DVI port, making us wonder whether this is meant to be a monitor for an Eee PC or a self-contained all-in-one computer. If it’s meant to serve as a monitor, it must also double as a docking station, because otherwise there’s no reason to have Ethernet and audio ports.

The Denon logo on the bottom right of the display indicates that this potential all-in-one may have a built-in Denon amplifier and speaker system. If it is a standalone system, we suspect its CPU is none other than Intel Atom, but other than that we have no clue what’s inside. The Eee Monitor has been rumored to have a built-in TV tuner and a starting price of $500.

We have all the shots you could dream of below.

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Could ASUS finally be listening to our complaints about the tiny keyboard on the 901? DigiTimes and Engadget reported this morning that “Asustek Computer is planning to launch new Eee PC models, the 904 and 905, which have an 8.9-inch panel but use a similar chassis and keyboard as the company’s 10.2-inch models.”

Of course that was just a rumor, until my friend Sascha over at EeePCNews.de posted some pictures of what looks to be an Eee PC 903 and Eee PC 904 (links in German).

The Eee PC 903 (picture after the jump) looks puzzling. It seems to lose the fancy build of the 901 including the silver hinge and dedicated shortcut buttons along the top of the keyboard. It resembles the Eee PC 900 more than anything else.

Could this be a cheaper 8.9-inch Eee PC with Atom? Is this move designed to make the Eee PC more price competitive with the MSI Wind? Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, we took the 5,400 rpm Western Digital Scorpio The storage device that holds your OS, programs, and data.
Learn Morehard drive out of the MSI Wind and replaced it with a SanDisk SATA 5000 SSD. We hoped the boot time would be better and that applications would load more quickly, but in a day or two of anecdotal use with the SanDisk SSD, we didn’t notice any performance improvement. At the time, we noted that the SanDisk SATA 5000 is not a very fast SSD and that we regretted we had not had time to do any firm testing before we had to return our review model Wind to MSI.

This week, when our friends at DV Nation lent us a blazing-fast 64GB Samsung SATA II SSD, we couldn’t wait to install it in our Eee PC 1000H and this time run a complete battery of real-world tests to see how much a difference a high speed SSD can make in a mini-notebook.

With the easily accessible upgrade panel on the Eee PC 1000H, we were able to swap out the system’s default 5,400 rpm hard drive, a Seagate Momentus, with the Samsung SATA II in minutes. After installing a fresh copy of Windows XP Home SP2 with all the ASUS drivers and utilities, we were ready to put the system through some tests.

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It wasn’t too long ago that we brought you our first impressions and then our full review of the Eee PC 901. And though we knew the Eee PC 1000(H) wouldn’t be far behind, we never could have guessed how quickly it would arrive. As soon as we saw the first Eee PC 1000H go up on eBay (from a Taiwanese seller), we jumped at the chance to have the newest member of the Eee PC family join us and its American Eee PC brothers.

I have only spent a few hours with the system but I have to say my comrade Jeff Wilson was 100 percent correct in his review of the 901 when he said, “with the promise of the 10-inch Eee PC 1000 and Eee PC 1000H just around the corner, some may want to play the waiting game.”

Update: Wait no more. Our full review of the Eee PC 1000H is right here.

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