Asus to show second-gen Eee PC next week Asus is due to show off what it calls the "next generation" of its elfin Eee PC Linux-based sub-laptop at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week. The unit is almost certainly going to come with WiMax wireless broadband connectivity. It may come with an 8.9in screen - larger than the current model's 7in display - …
so now it's just a cheap laptop.
Seriously I'd live with a screen half the size (I still want a real keyboard mind) if they'd just give it a battery life worth my notice, otherwise I'll spend £1,000 on a laptop I can play games on in my 2 hours of battery life.
All I want to do is write and listen to music.
And tshh to them shutting down the Circus new years event in Akihibara.
ASUS did announce a longer life battery and EEE PC accessories, see here: http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product.htm#acc
If ASUS could add better Smartphone connectivity the EEE PC 2 could become a real alternative for business users that need a small light device for email/PIM/simple Office work.
Now if they do bring out the slightly larger screen plus a larger drive (please be 16GB) with a couple of GB of RAM then this baby will rock the world. Straight up with a good price I'd grab two maybe three so the kids have one each. At these prices and portability you can't go wrong. And it isn't running Windoze so its not bloatware either. Sweet!
So, one user wants an Eee PC but with a bigger screen, someone else wants more memory, someone else better smartphone connectivity, 3G, HSDPA etc. etc.
Somone else will want to play games on it, run windows apps natively, VM Ware, better sound, bigger keyboard...
It just goes to show what an impossible task it is to build a sub-sub notebook that satisfies enough people for their to be a decent market and therefore what a wonderful job Asus have done with the Eee PC. Lets face it, by the time they've added in everything everyone wants you've got a large laptop running Windows!
I hope Asus resist the temptation for feature creep and maintain the ethos of the original. Small upgrades to memory, battery life and processor speed are fine as long as the time-to-charge isn't negatively impacted. Other than that, leave it alone. It's great!
I can't find an announcement about improved battery life, but it would be heading down the right path to make this sub-sub-notebook a kick ass media player. The other issue would be storage and the single digit GBs is a bit paltry for the job. As most of that storage would be read only perhaps a built in DVD player (double sided DVDs of course) would do the trick. I presume providing a DVD player would be cheaper than providing 17GB solid state memory. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Asus better watch out...if they keep doing such good work, they might get "innovated" by M$! (bought)
good product, if they can option everyones desires (bigger screen for some, more SSD space for others), then this line of lappy's could be very successful...and stick it to sony with their ridiculously over priced poncy lappy's...
go Asus!
More memory
Some bigger storage, maybe add a 120gb HDD
Bigger Screen
A better graphics card
Better Sound
Longer battery life
WiFi
oh serial and parrallel ports as well
Oh a Bluray / HD DVD writer
Don't forget half a dozen more USB ports would be nice, ooo ooo as well as Firewire
Am I missing the point here?
Smartphone connectivity s/w has been done already. See here: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/02/celios-redfly-platform-enables-foleo-like-winmo-devices/ Lets hope ASUS buy the s/w.
ASUS have a 6 cell battery as wel as the 4 cell one, which should give around 4-5 hours of use.
Forget all that posh connectivity, you can all do most of that with a USB bluetooth dongle. How about making use of the RJ11 socket already provided and dropping in a V90/V92 modem?
I had a perfect users for the Eee, a little old lady who wanted a laptop to email the Grand children. Perfect I thought, except she has no wifi, or any need for broadband, okay, modem will do fine... Oh, except it doesn't have one... USB modem... Oh, except they're all winmodems, and the Eee is Linux... Cue major search for a source of a Linux friendly USB modem in the UK.
I emailed several suppliers, only to find that there knowledge of linux is just about on par with my Grandmother, who's been dead for a couple of years!
I gave up.
"...larger than the current model's 7in display..."
That model's got more than seven inches on display.
(BoomBOOM!)
But, yes; a new eee model should mean a new "EEE" Model - possibly matching the computer's capabilities:
- a bigger display
- longer life and faster recharges
- room for more ram
(BoomBOOM!)
now, with less cellulite!
err, they were referring to the model, not the PC?
great, they're gonna listen to the whiners who weren't gonna buy one in the first place, and turn it into yet another overpriced, power hungry wannabe mac book. All these "features" added will increase weight and cost and decrease reliability.
They need to get some of the "original flavor" EE's around here first.
But then again is it as good as my old Toshiba Portege P3 circa 2001 which cost $4500 new, for it can play DVD's from either a USB or PCMCIA adapter and has an incredible battery life of up to three hours from a 3Ah Lithium battery.
The additional $600 extender battery flat pack which fits neatly under the unit adds another six hours life as well and the rugged alloy case bare unit weighs a mere 1.5 kilograms (3lbs pre metric) with an excellent 11" screen and less the one inch thick and fits neatly on all airline trays too !
I believe the baby EEPC with a screen almost half the size but has an internal battery almost twice as large to make the same run time as the versatile old P3!
Say the only thing hot about about the EeePC is the attached user in the picture though !
All these requests.....are people forgetting the point here ? It's a sub laptop made amazingly cheap....you shove it full of DVD drives, more RAM, large batteries and whatever else people are begging for and you ramp the price up, the machine size goes up and you just end up with a standard sized laptop at a standard laptop price!
The key difference, in my opinion, between a useful portable device and a laptop is the battery.
If it's a portable device you need to be able to pick it up, do a few hours work on it, leave it alone for a few days/weeks then pick it up and do a few more hours work without having to worry about charging in the meantime. Mobile phones do it. MP3 players do it. PDA devices used to do it before they added stupid colour screens and battery burning wifi.
The 480 vertical pixels are the second item, if people intend to do more than run the built in apps. Windows just does not work sufficiently well with 480 vertical pixels and Linux needs tweaking.
Asus haven't really helped themselves by allowing it to be modded beyond the suite of built in apps, as it may generate unrealistic expectations.
Everyone can be made happy though : add wireless and more ram/hard drives as plug in options and ship a decent battery as standard. It's then up to the user if they want to have dismal battery life, or not.
10 hours would be nice, and certainly no less than six.
A DVD you must be kidding! As far as I know there are no moving parts in the current EEE, an optical drive with its spindle motor and laser tracking mechanism adds a lot of moving peices and a lot of power consumtion, so I wouldn't want one.
However, I did get hands on with a 2gb model at PC world, and I think a bigger screen is a bonus even if it requires more power to flip all those extra pixels. And 4gb is a minimum, 8 would be good 16 might start taking its toll on battery life as would more RAM. I think I see a pattern more toys = more power consumption, so maybe the first order of business is to improve the battery.
How hard did you look? I'm guessing you're easily discouraged.
After roughly 1 minute of Googling I found this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamode-M56EXT-USB-T-Slim-line-external/dp/B000RFUNNC
As a rule of thumb you should not trust SALES people to give accurate product advice. Even (maybe that should that "especially") for things they "know" about.
I shouldn't think Asus are all that worried about Apple's rumoured sub-sub-notebook. If forecasts are accurate, Asus will sell more EEEs next year than Apple will sell notebooks full stop, let alone the tiny numbers of fashionistas who will queue up for the brand new and hugely expensive tiny one.
The EEE pc could use a better battery - one of those new lightweight ones from Sony would be nice - and the screen makes it obvious that it's built to a price. However, the single thing that's contributed the most to its success is the fact that £220 is a revolutionary price point for a laptop - they'd be crazy to move away from that.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
