Thanks to the crew over at AllAsus, we have some confirmed information about the Eee PC. These answers are straight from their Asus representative contact. Unfortunately, it’s not what we want to hear…
- Asus is not bringing the $199 model to the United States. The cheapest US model will be $259
The RAM and the Flash storage are both embedded. You can NOT upgrade them
Disappointing, to say the least.
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I’d like one of these but the battery life is kind of sucky. 3 hours. Bahhh.
Can’t upgrade or do they mean “really frickin hard to desolder those chips and put one ones on… like really really frickin hard!”
Where theirs a will theirs a soldering iron
Hmm, I think this just might have done serious damage to the first gen success. A lot of people are probably feeling quite bait and switched, unless the MSRP has little to no baring on the street price (like it does with many other products.)
RIP Eee PC. Dead. Sad, so sad. Big public presentation by the CEO, the first $199 laptop, release by late August. Blah, blah, blah. Lies, all lies. They must think we are idiots. There is no new paradigm hear. Just corporate greed and dishonesty. No pride, no shame. Only expedience. What a damn shame. Cynical. The market is changing rapidly. And Asus will remain a ZERO with no retail presence. If they pulled this crap in their core B2B business they’d be slaughtered. Well, maybe they already are pulling it. Which is why they are losing big contracts to rivals like Quanta. I am embarrased tat I bought the lie. I’ll be even more cynical from now on. Where is the CEO’s mother? Check it out. He might have sold her too to make a quick buck…
Full featured Windows laptops for $349.99. Yup. Just wait till Black Friday. Foo on you, Eee PC. Remember the Who song? Won’t get fooled again. Negroponte has pulled the same garbage with his laptop too. Overcharging the kids in Nigerian villages.
danny: a 349.99 laptop does not weight 2 lbs
anyway, i think im gonna cancel my order since i can’t upgrade my ram…
too bad
No option to upgrade RAM and Storage? that’s very sad. RIP Asus Eee. I’m out.
I know the price did go up significantly with spec reductions, but there are incongruities when comparing it to a 6 lb laptop and twice the size for the same price, when fitting this into a smaller size is part of the extra cost.
RAM not upgradable – that hurts
Photos seemed promising.
Let’s hope second generation will have it, but I doubt it.
asus killed EEE project,256M RAM model is too weak, and 512M is too expensive
It’s so sad. With that high price, I dont think it can’t be a good replacement for sub-notebook. I rather get a regular 15.4 Gateways at only 499 with the specs is even ten times stronger.
Forget about it…
still we cannot compare it with heavy 15″ notebooks, but it won’t be bestseller as I thought previously.
ASUS has truly been wasting our time.
Perhaps they should FOLEO it right away.
OK guys… you can buy a $399,00 laptop with this or that… but a simple question, can you buy a new laptop for $259,00 today? Eee specs are just fine for my needs, I don´t need lots of HD space, CD/DVD. I just need a portable laptop that works.
Hm…
RIP EEE, i wanted to buy 200$ w8gb/512mb :’(
259$ sounds too bad. I’m think that better to buy full-size DELL laptop with Sempron-3500+ for 800$
Bye, Bye EEE!:””(__(
Even at $259, this laptop is very nearly ideal for me. Small size, low weight, and a fast workable non-Microsoft Windows system.
Great for travelers, email, word processing, etc. Gamers will want something more beefy.
I only wish it had a monocolor display so the energy consumption could be dropped even further.
When it is available, Im buying
Might as well get an Apple Ipod Touch. 8gig/$299.
Not good news but not entirely unexpected either. At the end of the day you cannot compare a EEE with standard laptops. They are a totally different class of product. I will still be buying one as it meets my criteria of small, light, with enough functionality that I don’t have to rely on lugging around my 4kg Lifebook. I am really annoyed at the RAM being soldered as boosting RAM is a very common practice though the Flash drive didn’t surprise me as it is still early days for this type of drive being featured in this genre.
Dmitry wrote:
Hm…
RIP EEE, i wanted to buy 200$ w8gb/512mb :’(
259$ sounds too bad. I’m think that better to buy full-size DELL laptop with Sempron-3500+ for 800$
Bye, Bye EEE!:â€â€(__(
Friday, September 7, 2007 at 7:44 am #
PLEASE!!! My god dude did you ever read anything about this product??? I’d say no. when first came out they gave a price range of $200 to $400 then gave spec range of 256mb to 512mb, 2,4,8 or 16gb flash drive. With that in mind you would have to be a fool to beleive they would sell the highest specs at the lowest price. So far Asus has keep inside the range they promised. Just not shipping the $200 model to the US…Let me ask, who would want a notebook with 256mb ram, 2gb ram, and no camera, when for just a few more dollars you will double the power and have a camera built in? Read what the product is and does, do not guess and expect something different then what it is…
Paul, You do understand that the “256mb ram, 2gb ram, and no camera” version is what costs $259 USD. The “double the power” ( Double the ram and disk space) for the “few bucks” you speak of is actually more like $140 not so few bucks more! As an eeePC with 512MB of ram, camera, and 4GB disk space is $399 USD.
The difference between the $259 and $199 models is that the $199 model has a 2 cell battery (1.5 hr battery life) but the other specs are the same.
Yeah, that is kind of disappointing. I thought the eeePC would eclipse older technology that are now selling for cheap on ebay. At 400 dollars, you mine as well grab a Dell x300 or something, and have something that is almost just as small and light (dell is 3.2lbs? and less than 1in thin w/ 12.1 in screen, while asus is 2lb, more than 1in thin? w/ 7″ screen) but a lot better performance. So, the question now is whether the performance is worth the price of paying for a used product or not. Personally, I would get the x300 now, seeing the eeePC’s lack of performance and cheap build quality. As for price, the x300 may be even cheaper if you’re lucky and snag one that people don’t pay attention to.
Interesting, the least they could do is offer a DDR2 SO-DIMM slot, the storage doesn’t bother me, I just installed Win98 and win2k on a 6-gig drive and I have more than 4 Gigs free, but the ram needs to be 512MB minimum, and I have a 256MB So-Dimm on my desk to use
There is an SD slot on the side for the new SDHC cards, why not a (much cheaper) So-Dimm slot??
I am not out yet, but I now have to think about it much harder. If these comments are true, then are 2 Li-Ion batteries worth $60? IF so, sell me the $199 laptop WITHOUT ANY BATTERIES, and then let us choose our own power supply.
I would be fine with a dummy battery (Just an empty cover) $199 model and then choose your own battery setup, not only that battery packs could be made in all sorts of types by the end user.
It uses NiMH batteries and not Li-Ion
so according to Asus’ pricing a 2 cell 2600 NiMH battery (voltage unknown) is worth $60…
Ah, but NiMH is a 1.2-1.4 volt (mean voltage) technology, you can’t change that. So we do know the voltage.
As I said, still not out, but pretty disappointed.
not sure what the hype is about this laptop considering real laptops can be bought for less that offer more. can someone enlighten me?
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