New Eee PC announced

[dawnsboy]

Asus announced the launch of a new line of Eee PC's (model 900 series) that will feature an 8.9 inch viewing screen (800 x 600), a faster processor, 1GB RAM and up to 12GB storage.  This model was unvieled at CEBIT.  Here is a link to a side by side comparison with the current 701.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/7-inch-eee-pc-vs-9-inch-eee-pc-ready-fight/

Whats the catch?

It is priced at €399 ($606.00 at the moment).

 

[tomh38]

Hmmmmm ... (thinking thinking thinking) ... nah.

[Triarius Fidelis]

Dwarves are rich, so they should find it easy to buy.

[BlueMage]

Why is it bigger?  For crying out loud, the whole POINT of this device was that it be as small as possible while remaining physically usable.  It's not going to be running Vista - it's running linux, or maybe a stripped down version of XP.  It doesn't need a whole lot of grunt.

[tomh38]

BlueMage:  I don't understand this either.  I wasn't going to buy one anyway, but I thought the whole idea was to have something between a PDA and a laptop.  If I were to buy one, it would be the smaller one, since if I needed one it would be for mobility.

Tom

[nightflier]

Actually, this one seems even more attractive to me. I understand you get a screen resolution of 1024x600. The original one uses 800x480 with black borders around it. Of course, I have not handled either of them, but judging by the pictures, the slight size increase accommodates a significantly better screen. Haven't seen a final prize for the US, though (which may change my opinion).

[dawnsboy]

The slightly larger screen will keep application windows within the viewing area.  On the ultra mobile pc's with 7" screens many of the applications will lose status bars or selection buttons below the screen.  It can be dealt with by pressing the ALT key and repositioning the window with the mouse.  This is a problem for some users.  I would think that switching to icewm would help out somewhat with that.  The newer versions will have faster processors as well (the 900MHz cpu actually clocks at about 600MHz according to some reports that I have read).  No big deal there as far as I am concerned.  I just want to know if I can get VL running inside it. 

I did some research on these and found one for sale with Windows Vista on it.  Apparently there is a stripped down version of Vista floating around the 'net.  It's called Vista Lite.  Odd thing to do when one can just run linux or xp if you need windows for some reason.

The thing that gets me is the big jump in price tag between an Eee pc with a 7" screen and one with a 9" screen.  Not worth the dinero if you ask me.