Asus to slash retail Eee PC line-up Asus today confirmed a version of its MacBook Air-like netbook, the 1008HA, with a removable battery will indeed be coming to the UK, part of a scheme to streamline the Eee PC line-up here. By July, Asus will be offering three key Eee PC netbooks to the general public - all of them 10in models pre-loaded with Windows XP and …
I was going to buy one of these in the near future. Now that they are all preloaded with XP, they can keep them. I'm not paying no stinkin' M$ tax ... UK tax (and moat cleaning, and pocketed office rental, and dog foot, and new sets of light bulbs, and two flat screen TV's ... etc.) are enough for my purse.
Why does it seem like I'm the only person who wants to buy a 9 inch netbook with SSD? It's hard enough already to find ANY store selling EEEs, and already I can only see hard drive models.
On top of that ASUS seems to be the only manufacturer with SSD, which is the one feature I really wanted out of a netbook, guess I'll just have to look harder?
If' it's got a 10" screen and has a spinning dies-if-you-drop-it drive, then it's not a netbook.
I'll be somewhere else buying a REAL notebook, or maybe hoping to win the lottery so I can afford a Vaio P. So long, Asus... and thanks for for the Eee 701. Stupid morons. You had something nice and you fumbled it away.
Wasn't the whole point about netbooks being something that fits inside a (large-ish) coat pocket? I certainly won't be buying a 10 incher when upgrading my 701 in two years.. I'd rather pay for a new battery then for something that's suddenly a lot larger, when the point was something small and (preferably) cheap.
About a month ago I was able to find one of the last Linux Eee 901s with the 20GB SSD. I didn't want a hard drive because I use it on the train, and I didn't want to pay for a Windows license I wouldn't use. I absolutely _adore_ it, but it was only usable after I installed a real OS on it. (I chose Debian 5.0 Stable.)
I don't understand why they put an idiotic bastardization of a GUI in their factory Linux installation. It's no wonder customers loathed the "Linux" version-- it had even less functionality than Program Manager in Windows 3.x.
Any distribution with both GNOME and KDE installed would have been much more usable. No matter which environment Asus set as the default, users who were new to Linux and willing to look around a bit in the menus would have had something close enough to Windows that they could have learned to use it without much trouble.
What's especially embittering about the whole thing is that the Windows XP 901 comes with such a perfect, crudware-free XP image on it. They probably didn't have enough space to crud it up in the sparse 12 gigs of storage the Windows version comes with. It would have been wonderful if they'd shown the same restraint toward Linux.
The Eee 701 was great - an obvious first-generation potentially market-disrupting piece of kit (with obvious room for improvement, like all 1st gen things). The 901 tackled the most pressing deficiencies without compromising the cool concept and it's superb - a big enough screen, great battery life (for an x86), above-average wifi reception and small and cheap enough to carry around in ones man-bag. Oh, and it'll still work after being waved around a bit while turned on, thanks to the lack of a spinning thing.
The windowsification of netbooks is depressing, but don't lose heart just yet. The industry is still groping its way towards a portable or at least coffee-table internet device that people actually like. I'll be interested to see how ARM-based devices measure up on battery life and performance. I have no idea how good they are these days, will they be up to playing normal-res divx videos? That's a killer-app for me.
Until then, the 901 is god.
Mine's the one made of neoprene.
As others have said this is just chasing the same market as everyone else. And really they are just cheaper laptops (lacking the vista tax = higher licence, memory, disk) and not netbooks at all.
Its weird that SSDs are dropping off all these lineups. Basically it means the masses have not adopted any of the uses that netbooks could be good for (silence, continuous standby, ebooks, etc) and are just buying them as cheap laptops. The one thing both M$ and Intel tried to prevent when they limited the specifications of the lower cost market! So its amusing to see them frustrated but sad to see so few real netbooks remaining.
I love my Eee 901. Although the initial Linux install is a bit crappy, Ubuntu Netbook remix is great.
There is no way I will ever buy a "netbook" with a harddrive. I doubt if I will ever buy a laptop with a harddrive again for that matter. The whole idea was to have something small, portable, for writing stuff down when out and about. And cheap and rugged.
Hopefully someone else will come and fill in the gap in the market.
Any idea if the phasing out of the 9 inch is related to the number of cracked screens being reported for both eee & aspire one?
Despite being marketed as portable devices it appears they may need more care than your average laptop, so I've reluctantly gone back to my sturdy old Jornada 720 for 'chuck in a bag' needs and (now more carefully than before) use my AAO for browsing/email /typing in front of a telly.
I bought a 701 when they came out and used it practically daily for a year, then went up to a 900 which is a lot nicer because of the screensize (pixel wise), only drawback is the heat & shorter battery life, the 701 is now my download/online storage access machine.
But killing off the 8.9" & SSD range is monumentally dumb IMHO, I really like the size/weight of the 701/900, along with the ruggedness SSD provides it means I can lug em around without worry of the internal drive dying from being dropped or shaken to death in my panniers.
No 8.9" range from Asus will mean when I'm done with my Eee 900 I'll be searching for a manufacturer that does an 8.9" with SSD. So long and thanks for the 'legtops', Asus.
First off - it has to be light enough to be carried about in a bag without caring - I think 1KG max should be the aim.
Second - Ubuntu (Remix) should be used. A full-fledged OS miles better than any version of Windows - and it runs beautifully on these machines. Mass of applications and a huge community of users to work with to enhance/extend things.
Third - No HDD - this cuts down noise and power usage.
@Michael
Try the Dell Mini 9 which sounds like it fulfils your specs - I picked mine up for £220.00+VAT.
All I need is a client machine because I mostly work on LAMP servers. I was able to use the Mini 9 as my main machine for several weeks - I plugged it into an external monitor, keyboard and mouse at work. All I need is standard Ubuntu, Foxmarks, import keys, connect to mail server and I'm sorted.
As a brucie bonus - it's dead easy to take away with you - and will even fit inside the normal safes used in most hotels.
Mind you - it might be worth checking the Mini 10 - currently £199 - or the Mini 12 which unfortunately seems to come with a HDD only.
they are moving the device vendors up-scale where they can market the higher performance value against the ARM devices. If they tried to stay on the lower end, ARM would eat them up with the same or better performance, longer battery life, and a cheaper price. By pushing the hardware up the chain some and eliminating the lower end, they'll create the impression(marketing) that those ARM devices aren't in the same category.
While I think this is their only current option, I also think they'll fail since what created the netbook market is the $250 price with good enough performance. So they'll have to make the ARM devices look really really bad compared to the higher end netbooks. We already saw many netbook manufacturers refuse to create identical Linux and Windows XP versions and most likely it was the Microsoft contracts which caused this.
It's gonna be an interesting 2nd half of the year.
As others have said...
10in scrren == too large
Windows XP == too old/not netbook friendly (yes - I installed it on my 701 for 2 months and it was cr*p - put Xubuntu back on)
no SSD ==not rugged enough
battery life == less than same machine running Xubuntu (by 1 hr)
so goodbye Asus - you've killed your netBooks and If I cannot find one I can install a touchscreen on (Mini 9? Aspire One?) then the good 'ol Psion is back
Psion netBook 64Mb RAM and.....
sub 10 in screen ==tick
EPOC OS==tick - OK old but it's reliable and has apps I need and no crud
no SSD (4Gb CF)==tick
battery life - 16hrs (with nB Pro battery) ==up to 12hrs (not tested beyond - got bored)
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