Asus keyboard PC due May. Or maybe June

Asus' Eee PC Keyboard could appear as early as May the firm's bosses confirmed at CeBit today. Company chairman Jonney Shih said the firm was shooting for a Q2 launch for the the device, which incorporates a fully fledged PC and touchpad into a standard five-inch deep keyboard. This could mean May, he said, before opting for …

[bogwoppit]

What, no picture?

To lazy to Google.

[Paul Martin]

Full circle

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, most home microcomputers had the keyboard integrated into the processor box. Now they're going to integrate the processor into the keyboard. Will it have an interface for a cassette tape recorder?

[Alex Walsh]

And lo!

The spiritual successor to the Atari ST is born.

Machines built into keyboards are popular again then? Who'd have thunked it.

[Charlie Barnes]

I'll leave now...

"Women, in particular, were more likely to opt for a smaller screened, more mobile device, he claimed"

Presumably because it can fit in their handbags..?

Mines the one without the handbag on the hook.

[Kenneth Chan]

Wait, I have one in the basement

Everything old is new again. Remember Dragon, Sinclair, C-64?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So my 701eeePC

is now a girly laptop? bah.

Also, would the new screens make it an OLeeeD PC?

Keyboard computing: It's the future... if you're from the same era as Marty McFly.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a thick keyboard

"which incorporates a fully fledged PC and touchpad into a standard five-inch deep keyboard"

A standard five-inch deep keyboard? In what reality is a keyboard five inches deep (depth being measured vertically)?

[Anonymous Coward]

@ Alex Walsh

"The spiritual successor to the Atari ST is born."

*cough* You mean the spiritual successor to the BBC Micro, don't you? What with them having come out a good four years before the Atari ST? Even the Acorn Atom came out in 1980/81, and the Acorn Electron in 1983.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmmm

Cheaper than a Mac, there again, so would a block of gold....

[Kurt Guntheroth]

3 letters

"Shih rejected a suggestion that the Eee brand was becoming diluted as the firm slapped its the three letters on everything..."

Wait. Is "Eee" 3 letters, or only one...or two.

I'll just go now.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Anonymouse Coward

Ah the rich kid BBC owners are out here again! Of course, the Apple ][ predates even the Atom by a good 4 years...

Heavenly Bill because he at least does some good with all his money, unlike Jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: What a thick keyboard

The depth will be...the depth. You are confusing height and depth it would seem. Dafty!

[The Unexpected Bill]

Keyboard PCs

It's still possible to get a PC in a keyboard. A company by the name of Cybernet Manufacturing still sells them with modern processors, and I've seen older examples turn up on auction sites.

Hopefully nobody at Register Hardware will mind too much if I post a link:

http://greyghost.mooo.com/cybernet-zpc/

(dial up, low bandwidth and users who are charged by data transfer amounts may want to proceed with caution--I took a fair number of pictures in my exploration.

[Anonymous Coward]

@first comment (what no picture)

that used to mean something else in the good old days of the eee launch and a few months after...

<sigh>

[Fab De Marco]

I can't have it until May or June?!

So they have taken an EEE PC.. ripped off the monitor and errrr thats it. How much more design and maufactuing do you need?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a thick keyboard

"(depth being measured vertically)"

And I suppose in your world height is measured horizontally????? I'll translate then: it'll be incredibly tall and slim.

In our world, depth is front-to-back distance when referring to objects (top-to-bottom when talking about space, such as the space in a swimming pool)

[Piro]

Asus keeeyboard PC

Cute idea, but this makes the normally minor issue of spilling beer onto your keyboard a hugely expensive incident

[Peyton]

grumble

I'm still waiting on the EEE monitor we were promised. I don't want a big, clunky, lap-roasting keyboard.

Still nice to hear they may be pushing OLED, since the more backers it gets, the sooner it'll affordable (and hopefully > 10 inches).

[Jason Togneri]

Um

So what they're actually building is an Eee, but without a screen?

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Um (Is "Re: Um" the worst title ever?)

"So what they're actually building is an Eee, but without a screen?"

At this price point, they'd better not be. The screen is one of the most expensive single components in an Eee. (If it weren't, they'd put a better one in.) So unless they want to get flamed for selling a large laptop with no screen, they'd better have quite a lot of punch under that keyboard.

[Ishkandar]

@Alex Walsh

Long before there was the Atari, there were the Apple IIE and the TRS-80 Model 1 Level 2 which were both keyboards with electronics inside them !! The Tandy had the better keyboard but the Apple had the better marketing and the rest, as they say, is history !!

[Herby]

"Keyboard PC"??

HUH? I thought those were called "LAPTOPS". In fact they show adverts on TV for one here for $499 or so, and that includes a screen. Oh, you want to connect it to a display? Most Laptops I see (and use) have a nice VGA connector for just that purpose.

Am I missing something here?

Oh, these "Keyboard PC's" are also portable and battery operated. How about that!!

[Jason Bloomberg]

Your starter for ten ...

... What is its practical use ?

It's a shame there's no picture as that would make things clearer for people, but if it hasn't changed since prototype it looks like a standard keyboard with a 5" LCD where the numeric keypad usually is.

It looks nice, feels like a "must have", but it's darned expensive and I'm not sure what use it is.

[TeeCee]

Re: what a thick keyboard

You've never used an IBM 5251 terminal then?

For the uninitiated, a doorstop of a beast (assuming your doors are of the 40' high, solid oak, iron bound variety) with a keyboard quite capable of derailing trains if left in the wrong place.

[Neil]

TRS80 anniversary

Slightly unusual to celebrate the 32nd anniversary of a product, but it is true for the TRS80 model 1 which was launched in 1977! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80). It didn't need a mouse or touchpad or indeed Windows and managed to do wordprocessing in 48kb of RAM!

Mine's the Parka...

Neil.

[Fab De Marco]

Google corrects me

It is more than a EEEPC with the screen taken off. And Re: comments about cost and removing the screen aspect of the price... well they didn't acually get rid of teh screen completely. tbh I've lost count of the times I have drearily looked over the the right hand side of my keyboard and wished I had a tiny screen with a calendar on it.. suddenly my FHM 365 babes calendar seems so boring.

http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/asus-eee-keyboard-is-acutally-a-pc.jpg