No problem with availability because its too expensive! #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
Make it less than £250 and you've got another sale (as a 701 upgrade) anything above that and Acer have a look in with
Hell, its even worth having an iPhone 3G with unlimited data for £99 + (18 x £30) = £639, against £319 + (18 * £20) = £679 for an Asus with 3Gb / month on O2!
What's with the unsightly bezel around the touchpad & fugly hindge on the 901? the 701/900 hindge design is so much nicer, and the picture you're showing of the side of the unit is photoshopped - the power input socket is oval whilst the hindge is perfectly circular.
So what will the "real deal" look like in the end? all we've seen are the maniuplated images Asus have given the press.
Thumbs down on the fugly design, thumbs up on the 6 cell battery, bluetooth & faster processor though.
ooookkkk, so does it have HD or SSD? this is the big Q.
baby laptops MUST have SSD's, otherwise they are just normal laptops. imo.
gotta give props to Asus, tho, they are a great co. they have practically created a market space for these things, even tho it was inevtiable that someone would produce them. they do make some good stuff as well, i've owned a few products from them.
I can get over 3 hours on this 701 Eee, but where are the ~£300 mark legtops (too small to be called laptop) with absurdly exceptional battery life? I'm talking 8+ hours with screen on full brightness & wifi on, most of these designs of laptop concentrate more on the layout of the screen/keyboard/ports and then just slap the battery somewhere on the back wherever they can squeeze it in.
Sure a long battery life legtop would be heavier but I could live with that, using the standard cylindrical cells saves them money but what about the flat types of battery used in mp3 players/mobiles etc.? a bunch of those on the underneath of the unit would help with stability (the Eee can have a tendancy to tip backwards when on uneven surfaces) and give you exceptional runtimes.
On the Asus eeepc website: http://eeepc.asus.com/global/news06032008.htm
Shows specs for Eee PC 1000, Eee PC 1000H & Eee PC 901
Interesting that the H in 1000H seems not to mean XP Home version, as I saw somewhere. It seems to mean Hard Disk - because it has a hard disk but you can get it with Linux too
The odd thing for me though is why make a 8.9" and a 10" - it's almost the same!
Another thing on size: I saw an 900 with XP in PC world the other day. What surprised me was that to start with I didnt notice it had a bigger screen than my 701! - reason being the XP icons were so small!!
So the Linux simple GUI seems to have distinct advantages for these devices.
Pricewise I have to say that a 900 at £329 looked prtty silly next to a full size budget laptop also at £329! The eee is not a style icon like a Sony Vaio or even an Acer One so I cant see them shifting many at that price - needs to be sub £300 for me - for any of these 'Netbooks'
Just thought I'll mention it while we're on the subject of UMPC's. I got a HP Mini-Note the other day as my Eee was no match for my fat fingers. It came to £354 all in, not really worth it for the spec, but worth it to save the pain in my back lugging my full size laptop from datacentre to datacentre. And before you say it, yes I am made of money :).
Most of the online reviews are for the Vi$ta version so I thought I'll add a few notes on the Suse version on the off chance anyone is interested.
The Suse Desktop 10 enterprise implementation is appalling, sorry, I didn't mean appalling, it's the Antichrist. Whoever created the master image must have been drunk, it's almost as though he/she thought they were installing Window$. Firstly, Bootup time is around 60seconds, which isn't bad if it was running XP or Vista, but 60 seconds with a linux OS? come on HP do your homework. There's a hundred and one other problems with it, but the most amateurish 'issues' are with software installation/updates configuration, i.e
Yast is configured to look at a local optical drive for file repositories (guess what, yeah, there isn't one)
Online Update is configured is configured to look at a local optical drive for update repositories (As above).
A majority of the applets listed in the System & Tools section of the god awful menu system are not installed, so guess what happens when it asks if you want to install the missing applet?, yeah you guessed it, it looks for the CD/DVD.
HP do not supply a restore disk/flashkey with the Mini-note, and there is'nt a built in mechanism to create one, and before you ask why would you want a restore CD if there isn't an optical drive?, HP do supply an instruction manual on CD, go figure. However, you can phone HP support and ask them to send you a restored CD (after 30mins on hold while the nice man from call centre Goa asks his supervisor WTF as they don't seem to have any documentation on the Suse version of the Mini-note). I believe you can download an ISO from the HP website, but with Virgin Media throttling my connection so much, I like to save my bandwidth allowance for importing things like pr0n and torrents.
So all in all, even the Mini-Note was £200,I wouldn't recommend it to a non-technical user, unlike a eEE PC (unless they have fat fingers like me).
I'm hoping Acer have invested some time in proper real world testing of whatever distribution they've decide on before releasing the Wind to the masses.
Yeah that's mine, the one with £50 notes spilling out the pockets.
Asus are running their own brand into the ground #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
The Eee PC 701 was a breath of fresh air - a compact, functional and extremely cheap laptop for students, coffee shop dwellers, travellers, kids - anyone who needs casual computing access but not carry around a heavy laptop bag and cables to get it.
I do not understand where Asus are going any more. They are shoving so many features into the laptop that it's no longer value for money. They seriously need to rethink what they're doing because there are a raft of competitors coming and they're going to find themselves left out of their own party if they're not careful.
Actually, it's not at all. Unless Asus is a plural of Asu, which it isn't. The Eee 900 belongs to Asus, therefore it is Asus's. Just because it ends in an S, doesn't mean it's a plural. GODDAMMIT THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.
Does anyone know which draft of 802.11n the wireless is? A quick search of the web hasn't really pulled up an answer.
Doesn't make a difference to my purchase; I've been fighting my will power and holding off on buying a 900 just for this piece of kit!
Loving the grammar 'discussion' though... Reminds me of some Blackberrys/Blackberries debates I used to see going around.
As I recall, no word that ends in S, plural or singular, is followed by 's. For example, the name Ross: something belonging to Ross is still Ross', even though there is only one Ross.
I think most people's ears perked up when they saw the inital price of "Under £200".
If you wanted small you could have bought them for a while now, maybe not such super small, but sub notebooks which just as much power as their older brothers have been around for ages, if you want to pay £1000+
Want a smaller laptop that you can't do much on? Get a PDA. (Yes PDAs are rubbish too, thats my point).
"Have any of you people actually seen/used the Aspire One? It's rubbish.
[...]the Linux OS feels like an afterthough, "
Not that Asus did a much better job with Xandros for the Eee! Setting it to require a password on use of sudo bricks it, and you can't log in successfully if the disk is full!
Velocity Micro Edge Z30 Midsize Desktop (2.66GHz Intel Core i5 750, 4GB DDR3, 500GB HDD, DVD±RW DL, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 1TB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 27" LCD)
HP (Hewlett-Packard) Pavilion p6210f Mini-Tower Desktop (2.6GHz Athlon II X4 620, 6GB DDR2, 640GB HDD, DVD±RW DL, Windows 7 Home Premium)
HP (Hewlett-Packard) Compaq Presario CQ5210F Mini-Tower Desktop (2.7GHz Athlon 64 X2 215, 3GB DDR2, 500GB, DVD±RW DL, Windows 7 Home Premium)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 500GB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 21.5" LCD)
Asus Eee PC 901 to hit Blighty on 1 July
Alex Walsh
It's missed the point #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
Eee by gum, it's priced as much as a regular budget laptop :(
Jack Harrer
Eeeeee... #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
It has lost its appeal already. MSI Wind please, as it looks much better and sports basically same specifications.
Shame, but not always first needs to be always the best.
Mark
Nice, but.. #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
Needs to be at least £50 cheaper to tempt me away from the upcoming Acer Aspire One...
David Roberts
That explains.... #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
...why play.com just knocked £40 off the PC 900.
I was just considering giving way to temptation when I saw this article.
Roll on July!
Paris because she should model the new PC 901.
H3N0451
GAH! #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
IT'S ASUS'S! ASUS IS NOT A PLURAL!!! GAH!
Richard
No problem with availability because its too expensive! #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
Make it less than £250 and you've got another sale (as a 701 upgrade) anything above that and Acer have a look in with
Hell, its even worth having an iPhone 3G with unlimited data for £99 + (18 x £30) = £639, against £319 + (18 * £20) = £679 for an Asus with 3Gb / month on O2!
Haku
Redesigned case.... urgh #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
What's with the unsightly bezel around the touchpad & fugly hindge on the 901? the 701/900 hindge design is so much nicer, and the picture you're showing of the side of the unit is photoshopped - the power input socket is oval whilst the hindge is perfectly circular.
So what will the "real deal" look like in the end? all we've seen are the maniuplated images Asus have given the press.
Thumbs down on the fugly design, thumbs up on the 6 cell battery, bluetooth & faster processor though.
Dave
Pre-order? #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
Anyone know anywhere offering pre-ordering on these babies yet? Tried google, but computer says no.
Anonymous Coward
Of course availabiliy is no problem .... #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 15:16 GMT
There will be no problems with availability this time because everyone is waiting for the Acer Aspire One.
Hands up, who still wants to pay over the odds for the Eee 901 now that they've seen the competition?
b
SDD or HD??? #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 16:22 GMT
ooookkkk, so does it have HD or SSD? this is the big Q.
baby laptops MUST have SSD's, otherwise they are just normal laptops. imo.
gotta give props to Asus, tho, they are a great co. they have practically created a market space for these things, even tho it was inevtiable that someone would produce them. they do make some good stuff as well, i've owned a few products from them.
tracking this space here (all welcome!):
http://www.eupeople.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=487
cheers,
bollos.
Dick Emery
No longer wanted #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 16:22 GMT
Waiting for the Acer. £199 better be correct because if it is it is MUCH more attractive an option.
Coat, because Asus is trying their luck.
Haku
Legtops & battery life #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 19:58 GMT
I can get over 3 hours on this 701 Eee, but where are the ~£300 mark legtops (too small to be called laptop) with absurdly exceptional battery life? I'm talking 8+ hours with screen on full brightness & wifi on, most of these designs of laptop concentrate more on the layout of the screen/keyboard/ports and then just slap the battery somewhere on the back wherever they can squeeze it in.
Sure a long battery life legtop would be heavier but I could live with that, using the standard cylindrical cells saves them money but what about the flat types of battery used in mp3 players/mobiles etc.? a bunch of those on the underneath of the unit would help with stability (the Eee can have a tendancy to tip backwards when on uneven surfaces) and give you exceptional runtimes.
spegru
Seen this? #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 19:59 GMT
On the Asus eeepc website: http://eeepc.asus.com/global/news06032008.htm
Shows specs for Eee PC 1000, Eee PC 1000H & Eee PC 901
Interesting that the H in 1000H seems not to mean XP Home version, as I saw somewhere. It seems to mean Hard Disk - because it has a hard disk but you can get it with Linux too
The odd thing for me though is why make a 8.9" and a 10" - it's almost the same!
Another thing on size: I saw an 900 with XP in PC world the other day. What surprised me was that to start with I didnt notice it had a bigger screen than my 701! - reason being the XP icons were so small!!
So the Linux simple GUI seems to have distinct advantages for these devices.
Pricewise I have to say that a 900 at £329 looked prtty silly next to a full size budget laptop also at £329! The eee is not a style icon like a Sony Vaio or even an Acer One so I cant see them shifting many at that price - needs to be sub £300 for me - for any of these 'Netbooks'
Gareth Irwin
Wow #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 22:39 GMT
They jumped the shark pretty quick.
Lime Smoothie
Too little, too late #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 22:39 GMT
Over £300?
Nope. Not this time. No sireee.
I'm waiting for the Acer Aspire One and I will not be moved.
Unless I buy that little red Dell.
Danger Mouse
HP Mini-Note #
Posted Thursday 12th June 2008 23:01 GMT
Just thought I'll mention it while we're on the subject of UMPC's. I got a HP Mini-Note the other day as my Eee was no match for my fat fingers. It came to £354 all in, not really worth it for the spec, but worth it to save the pain in my back lugging my full size laptop from datacentre to datacentre. And before you say it, yes I am made of money :).
Most of the online reviews are for the Vi$ta version so I thought I'll add a few notes on the Suse version on the off chance anyone is interested.
The Suse Desktop 10 enterprise implementation is appalling, sorry, I didn't mean appalling, it's the Antichrist. Whoever created the master image must have been drunk, it's almost as though he/she thought they were installing Window$. Firstly, Bootup time is around 60seconds, which isn't bad if it was running XP or Vista, but 60 seconds with a linux OS? come on HP do your homework. There's a hundred and one other problems with it, but the most amateurish 'issues' are with software installation/updates configuration, i.e
Yast is configured to look at a local optical drive for file repositories (guess what, yeah, there isn't one)
Online Update is configured is configured to look at a local optical drive for update repositories (As above).
A majority of the applets listed in the System & Tools section of the god awful menu system are not installed, so guess what happens when it asks if you want to install the missing applet?, yeah you guessed it, it looks for the CD/DVD.
HP do not supply a restore disk/flashkey with the Mini-note, and there is'nt a built in mechanism to create one, and before you ask why would you want a restore CD if there isn't an optical drive?, HP do supply an instruction manual on CD, go figure. However, you can phone HP support and ask them to send you a restored CD (after 30mins on hold while the nice man from call centre Goa asks his supervisor WTF as they don't seem to have any documentation on the Suse version of the Mini-note). I believe you can download an ISO from the HP website, but with Virgin Media throttling my connection so much, I like to save my bandwidth allowance for importing things like pr0n and torrents.
So all in all, even the Mini-Note was £200,I wouldn't recommend it to a non-technical user, unlike a eEE PC (unless they have fat fingers like me).
I'm hoping Acer have invested some time in proper real world testing of whatever distribution they've decide on before releasing the Wind to the masses.
Yeah that's mine, the one with £50 notes spilling out the pockets.
Mike Tree
Size does matter #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
It amazed me that people can't get it into their heads that the reason that the EEEpc is small is not to make it cheap, but to make it small.
If you want a full size budget laptop, but a full size budget laptop.
I wanted a small, light, ultraportable laptot, so I bought one. (Admittedly the price did help)
It's the size that makes it special, not the price. Except it's not special any more 'cos everyone is making them now.
Richard
@ H3N0451 #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
Actually it is ASUS' if you want to picky...
DrXym
Asus are running their own brand into the ground #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
The Eee PC 701 was a breath of fresh air - a compact, functional and extremely cheap laptop for students, coffee shop dwellers, travellers, kids - anyone who needs casual computing access but not carry around a heavy laptop bag and cables to get it.
I do not understand where Asus are going any more. They are shoving so many features into the laptop that it's no longer value for money. They seriously need to rethink what they're doing because there are a raft of competitors coming and they're going to find themselves left out of their own party if they're not careful.
Mat Stace
Not so pretty #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
The Eee 900 is a much better looking machine.
And yes, that is the sound of straws being clutched by a slightly miffed* person who nabbed an Eee 900 on the day of it's release.
*understatement of the year
Anonymous Coward
The Acer Aspire One is rubbish #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 10:58 GMT
>Needs to be at least £50 cheaper to tempt me away from the upcoming Acer Aspire One...
Have any of you people actually seen/used the Aspire One? It's rubbish.
The company claims the keyboard is 95-97 per cent full-sized, it's not, the Linux OS feels like an afterthough, and the build quality is plain shoddy.
Try it back to back with the 901 and there's only one winner, and it's not the Acer.
H3N0451
@Richard #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 12:20 GMT
Actually, it's not at all. Unless Asus is a plural of Asu, which it isn't. The Eee 900 belongs to Asus, therefore it is Asus's. Just because it ends in an S, doesn't mean it's a plural. GODDAMMIT THIS MAKES ME ANGRY.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/BridgetJonesDiaryMoviePoster.jpg
Mister Cheese
@Richard, H3N0451 #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 12:20 GMT
Technically it's ASUSes for a plural, ASUS' would be a possessional.
Any more pedants out there wishing to be correctise of my grammaring?
Tony Smith, Editor, Reg Hardware
@H3N0451 #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 12:35 GMT
Asus' is an example of a very well-established, commonplace typographical convention that drops the second 's' when the word already ends in an 's'.
Register Hardware, like The Register, has been following this convention for as long as it's been around.
Mark
Anger over apostrophe's ? #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 13:46 GMT
Its really annoying when people get them wrong isnt it?
Hmm, think I fancy fish and chip's tonight!
Aetyr
802.11n? #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 13:46 GMT
Does anyone know which draft of 802.11n the wireless is? A quick search of the web hasn't really pulled up an answer.
Doesn't make a difference to my purchase; I've been fighting my will power and holding off on buying a 900 just for this piece of kit!
Loving the grammar 'discussion' though... Reminds me of some Blackberrys/Blackberries debates I used to see going around.
As I recall, no word that ends in S, plural or singular, is followed by 's. For example, the name Ross: something belonging to Ross is still Ross', even though there is only one Ross.
Simon
@Mike Tree #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 16:04 GMT
I think most people's ears perked up when they saw the inital price of "Under £200".
If you wanted small you could have bought them for a while now, maybe not such super small, but sub notebooks which just as much power as their older brothers have been around for ages, if you want to pay £1000+
Want a smaller laptop that you can't do much on? Get a PDA. (Yes PDAs are rubbish too, thats my point).
Gary
Actually #
Posted Friday 13th June 2008 17:30 GMT
According to the well respected Apostrophe Protection Society, it should be ASUS's (not that they actually have this example on their site).
ASUS being a singular (as in there is only one company) proper noun and it being possesive of the eeePC. It matters not a jot that it ends in an S.
But if there was more than one ASUS.....stop it, stop it now...
William Towle
Re: The Acer Aspire One is rubbish #
Posted Saturday 14th June 2008 17:23 GMT
"Have any of you people actually seen/used the Aspire One? It's rubbish.
[...]the Linux OS feels like an afterthough, "
Not that Asus did a much better job with Xandros for the Eee! Setting it to require a password on use of sudo bricks it, and you can't log in successfully if the disk is full!
Despite that, I still like it though!