Asus goes official on extended Eee PC line-up

Undoubtedly feeling the pressure of competition, Asus has come clean on its ever expanding range of Eee PCs. And it's starting to get a little silly. The range, according to Asus UK, now stretches to 12 models. In addition to the original 2G Surf, 4G Surf and 4G; spring's 900; and the more recent 901, 1000 and 1000H, we now …

[Marc Lawrence]

KISS

Krikey, Idiotic Saving of Silicon?....

Or lets clear out our (or subsidery) stocks of memory / components / and we can best do this by offering upgrade options to customers. Scratch that.

and we can best do this by offering a bewildering array of monikors, which will drive people insane by trying to track them... but make Redmond happy by having default versions with XP. The geeks will know what the options mean....

silly really... they made the market and then effectively decided to hand it over to others with clean simple options.

[Arnold Lieberman]

Licencing

"Surely the extra memory would be more use to Windows users?"

It would be, except Micro$oft won't licence the OLPC version of XP on machines with >1Gb RAM.

The only reason I can conceive for this mess is that they are short of Atom CPUs and don't want to cut the profit margins so are using the Celery to fill in the gaps, and hopefully get punters buying Asus instead of other makes for less money.

I'm not doing anything until Xmas as hopefully by then the likes of Dell, HP (with a post-C7 update), Lenovo etc. will be on stream, hopefully with higher res screens and expresscard slots.

[John Roberts]

Eh?

My head hurts. It's going to cost me more in lost earnings trying to work out which model to buy that it's worth.

It's a cheap ultraportable laptop - how about a simple range?

Paris - cause all that thinking would give her an aneurysm.

[Nick]

Needs to break magic 200 pound barrier

I'm not going to spend more than 200 quid on a fourth machine.

I want at least a 9" screeen.

I want an Atom processor.

The Acer Aspire One promised this pre-release but ended up costing more.

I doubt these will hit that price point either.

[steogede]

2GB RAM

>> Whereas the 1000H comes with 1GB of memory no matter what OS

>> you prefer, the 1000HD comes with 1GB when you pick XP, and 2GB

>> when you go for Linux.

>>

>> Surely the extra memory would be more use to Windows users?

I would say that most of the Windows users would suffice with 1GB, the 2GB Linux users they are aiming at are probably more tech-savy and want to run more on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Noooooooo

What we really want to know is why have you not used the cute new girl instead of ol' "leather skin"?

[John Latham]

A mahoosive table speaks a thousand words

Good to see they offer Linux with everything.

http://event.asus.com/eeepc/comparison/eeepc_comparison.htm

Along with amusing footnotes:

* This Table is for internal use only.

* Please extract the spec table before releasing to customers.

[Anonymous John]

Surely the extra memory would be more use to Windows users?

I rather doubt that the typical user of such a Windows machine needs more than 1GB. I agree that Linux doen't need 2GB though.

Went into Sainsburys this morning and they had the Medion E1210 for £299.

Mine's the one with the whining credit card in the pocket.

[Steve]

It's simple

Look, it's simple. The 900 range is all .. no, wait. All of the 1000 series are .. OK, I'll start with the .. Oh screw it, I'm going to buy an Aspire One instead, it's easier...

Steve.

[david bates]

Soured the brand

I've got an Eee701, and I love it...but if I was coming to the table now I think I'd just throw up my hands at the excessive choice and just go for the little Acer.

Lifes too short to spend hours comparing the minutiae of spec changes between various versions of what is really an appliance.

[Kevin Pollock]

Madness...

...bought the 701 4G a while back for my daughter (12 years old). She loves it.

It's been said before on these boards, but Asus has lost the plot.

Original EEE PC was revolutionary because of the low price, user friendly OS and fast boot time.

The only things I'd say are essential to change (from the 701) are...

- Bigger screen (which they addressed, but only by losing the price advantage)

- WiFi that works as reliably as under Windows. Under Linux it's hit and miss for automatic connection

- A price that goes DOWN, not UP! Asus, please read Wikipedia articles on Moore's Law and Price Elasticity.

- Greater availability in the supply chain so that retailers cannot justify INCREASES over RSP.

- Better battery life (if I was using it - doesn't cause a problem for my daughter).

OPTIONAL changes would include a cosmetic re-vamp. Maybe more SSD, but 4G is plenty really for a Web Book PC. How about a dock station to really enforce the idea that this is an appliance, not a general purpose PC?

As the first in to this market, Asus should be focusing on getting volumes up, and prices down. Not on exploding the range of models and causing customer confusion.

Kev.

[James Neave]

No, it is simple, they're just trying really hard to make it not so

You got 3 choices:

7", 9" and 10" screen.

1) 7" = 701 (original eee pc)

2) 9" = 901 (only one with an Atom, good battery, decent wireless)

3) 10" = 1000 (er, only one, choice of flash or HDD)

Or, really really simple:

JUST BUY THE 901 'COS IT'S THE ONLY GOOD ONE

Tux, 'cos you also really don't want the XP one.

It's brain poison.

[William Towle]

Re: Licencing

Arnold Lieberman> "Surely the extra memory would be more use to Windows users?"

> It would be, except Micro$oft won't licence the OLPC version of XP on machines with >1Gb RAM.

...as indeed it was with the 90x models. So we have (EeePC 1000 excepted):

* XP Home preloaded on EULA-appropriate hardware -> 1GB RAM

* Linux preloaded -> 2GB RAM

So if you wanted XP on a 2GB machine, you'd just have to do the install yourself over the linux base. Chances you'd already have an install CD and be familiar with the process are high, I'd have thought.

...and, completing the picture, prices that reflect the cost of Windows-specific licenses vs cost of different hardware. Maybe???

[James Pickett (Jp)]

Question Regarding Performance

I'm in the market for one of these and I'm trying to be patient and wait for the Dell and Lenovo before dusting off the wallet!

I borrowed a friend's Eee 900 (Linux) last night and whilst web surfing was fine, it wasn't able to cope with the BBC iPlayer. Video was poor quality and choppy and the radio stations wouldn't play at all!

Does the 901 fare better with it's atom chipset, or is video a step too far?

[Flocke Kroes]

If Intel cannot supply Atoms, use something better:

Via C7 faster than Atom

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTUzNSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

[David H]

Re: Poor quality video with Eee 901

I don't have one of these but video performance problems could be related to network performance issues; the iPlayer is often unusable for me even using a reasonably powerful desktop computer with a broadband internet connection.

And it may be fashionable to knock the bewildering choice of Eee models that Asus offers but that hasn't harmed the increase in market share that they have recently enjoyed. The large number of choices on offer could be related to a similar strategy employed in the digital camera market, where numerous models are produced with slight changes in specification (and different colours) just to try to ensure maximum shelf space for a particular manufacturer in a shop.

[spegru]

£ Win vs Lin

What I want to know is the size of the windows tax.

Up to now there has been talk of 12 vs 20G Flash making the prtice the same.

Now though, we seem to have a 1000H which is the same spec with either OS

BTW yes I agree the apparently silly wide range is to use up components and/or cope with the atom shortage

My choice? 901 or maybe 1000H with linux!

[Britt Johnston]

less memory for Windows

We're tallking flash disk memory, I'd guess that Windows with virtual memory takes up more room than Linux, leaving less free for other use.

[paul]

@David H - Poor quality video with Eee 901

My original eee pc 2G surf running linux has great video quality when running mythtv frontend over my 802.11b wireless network.

Recordings from dvb-t (freeview) on my mythtv server.

[John Latham]

@James Pickett

Funny you mention Lenovo. The Eee 1000 is almost identically sized and weighted to a Thinkpad X60/61, which has a similar resolution screen but will piss all over it in terms of battery life and CPU power.

Unfortunately a decent X61 is about four times the price of an Eee 1000.

So the "small and cheap" USP has simply become "cheap and slow".

And at £350 it's only cheap compared to just about the most expensive laptops on the planet.

I just don't understand why someone can't produce a SSD/Atom equipped laptot with 10hr battery life. Maybe a different screen tech (OLED?) would help.

[Doug]

conspiracy I tell you

there were too few models before and as they were priced once Windows XP found its way out of the grave and onto the Eee PC, it was easy to see something rotten this way comes. The Linux models were being pushed aside for more Windows XP face time and price advantages. So now we have so many models and so many configurations it becomes legally defendable to be designing system to give Windows XP models retail selling advantages of the resource sipping, cheaper Linux variants. Now if they just don't produce many of the Linux based models they now list, they still get to keep the millions they are likely getting from that other OS vendor to push Windows XP.

it's a conspiracy I tell you. ;-)

[Phillip Webster]

@James Pickett

It's possible the video dropout on iPlayer was more due to the poor quality of Adobe's flash plugin than the machine itself.

I've not run an Eee PC myself, but I do use a Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz (with a Geforce 8600M for graphics) laptop and I still get choppy video under Linux.

It's a shame because it's one of the few uses I have to boot into Windows for (XP or Vista, they're both as bad as each other imo ;o))

[b]

you should see sony's offerrings!

firstly you are bang right about product bloat..

nothing worse than too many choices, imo.

goto here:

http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProductCategory.action?referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sony.co.uk%2Fproduct%2Fcomputing%3FnavigationSource%3Dwep&site=voe_en_GB_cons&category=VAIO+Notebooks

ELEVEN FAMILIES of laptops?!

anyway, also bang right about the memory 2gb for linux and 1gb for 'doze?

shurely shome mishtake?!

K.I.S.S.!

cheers,

bill

baby laptop thread:

http://www.eupeople.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487

(all welcome!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the 901 Linux

My shiny new 901 with linux installed arrived this morning. It's excellent. Everyone should get one!

[Anonymous Coward]

Asus needs to sort out the awful Xandros Linux first...

Don't get excited... You need Asus to sort out the buggy, slow, poorly supported Xandros-based distro which the Linux EEE's run.

As other posters have mentioned, video is choppy, and battery life sucks. Under Windows much is improved, but the Windows baggage kills the cpu (at least on the original 900 which I stupidly bought knowing the 901 was on its way!).

So far, theres only two serious-use OS choices I've found, Ubuntu where everything kind of works if you dick around long enough, or OpenSolaris, where enough works with a couple of packages that the rest doesn't matter.

Now I bought a usb DVD drive, I'm going to try a few other bits, like Fedora, but Redmond is going to catch the Linux boys with their pants down if they don't get a move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Price in Aus

http://www.jbhifi.com.au/computers/laptops/

10" $A687

So you can base your guestimates for the others around that!

[William Towle]

Re: Licencing

Arnold Lieberman> Micro$oft won't licence the OLPC version of XP on machines with >1Gb RAM.

William Towle> ...as indeed it was with the 90x models.

Here it is in print: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145719/microsoft_to_limit_capabilities_of_cheap_laptops.html