Reading further into the Digitimes story on Asus adding touchpanel screens into the Eee, PocketLint suggests that the panels will be the four-wire type adding just US$15 to the BOM.
“The 9-inch touch panel-equipped Eee PCs will adopt “four-wire resistive touch screen technology” adding just $15 to the manufacturing cost of the new tablet-esque gadget.”
While less precise than the five-wire garden-variety panel, the touchscreen interface is a much anticipated addition that would further add to the image of the Eee as a competitor to the recently introduced MacBook Air in the ultra-portable laptop category.
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I dont see the logic in putting the Eee up against the mac book air. A $499AUD notebook vs a $2400AUD notebook. I guess it will be a competitor if Asus will actually release their 10″ model with the dual core CPU….
Time will tell….
Problem is the reason almost EVERYONE on this forum likes the Eee is because its modular! You can add what you want to it, have it run what you want. That to a degree the ‘anti-thesis of Apple who seems to be stuck in a certain communistic perspective when it came to modularity of both hardware and software.
I do not consider the MacBook Air ultra-portable. Apart from being very thin (and compromising on hardware to make that possible), it is a full-size laptop.
I am, and always have been, a Mac user. I hoped that Apple would come with a real ultra-portable laptop, but the MacBook Air certainly is not it. I cannot imagine people actually buying a MacBook Air, unless they are blinded by the design. My next purchase will be a Eee PC to complement my iMac at home. The default software on the Eee PC is fine for me, it has anything I need ‘on the road’, as a MacOSX user I feel more comfortable with Linux than with Windows, and file exchange with my Mac will not be a problem.
Nah, people will fight amongst each other in order to get a Mac Book Air; why? Because it’s Mac, and (no offense intended), Mac has the biggest group of fans and groupies in computer history. They can start selling whatever X thing they want, and as long as they make a cool design, people will buy it because it’s Mac…
Hey! News is about 9″ touchscreen!
Means that it’ll be more convenient than the present 7″ one.
Sounds good ?
So what if it’s thin, it’s still huge and not portable. Can’t even change the battery or add ram, MacBook Air is useless. Apple’s after-sale service is crappy as well.
Please Please Please come out with the touchscreen version soon. I already have a 4G Surf, but I’ll will QUICKLY upgrade to a 9in touchscreen.
I already have a handwriting + keyboard software ( port of the old keymacs from the Agenda linux handheld ) that I’ve used on 3 different types of Linux tablets. I use xournal for my classes that I teach ( it is my “blackboard” and I then publish all my work from the class as .pdf files ).
Many universities that require a $150 textbook and a $150 TI-calculator. I’d just dump the textbook and calculator, switch to a free textbook in .pdf or ebook format ( whitman.mathematics.googlepages.com ), and have them purchase an eeePC touch. Then you could use yacas ( yacas.sf.net ), sympy ( code.google.com/p/sympy/ ), maxima ( maxima.sf.net ), GeoGebra ( http://www.geogebra.org ), wims ( wims.unice.fr ), or one of many linux/online based Mathematics software to help with the class.
You could save students a lot of money by having them use free content on a product like the eeePC rather than pay for paper textbooks.
- m
The major textbook companies hope to switch over to a primarily etext-based system by 2012, arrasmith. They’ll make cheap black and white texts for instructors who want ‘em, but focus on selling ebooks to students. By then, stuff like the EEE will be commonplace, hopefully.
And heck, Apple may even have come out with an affordable super-portable.
I love my 4g so far but would gladly pass it on to my wife to get a touchscreen version. A touchscreen and a larger size… Just hope the resolution gets pumped up a bit. They just cant get here fast enough.
I love my eeepc, if asus came out with a 9inch touchscreen, I would pick one up in a second!
I love Asus Eee PC but the 4 Cells 4400mAh battery may be not enough!
tested another similar products , the sceen just keep the batt juice up quickly. hope they could figure out soon.
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