Asus' own Eee-beater spied on web
Snaps reveals snazzy, top-end system
Asus' Eee-beater mini laptop, the N series, has made its first appearance online after it emerged the Taiwanese manufacturer had decided to compete with itself.
French-language site Blogeee.net has posted a stack of piccies of the 10.2in machine, all of which have clearly come direct from inside Asus' marketing department.
Here's a selection - there are many more at Blogee:
The snaps reveal some interesting features. The N10, as the laptop's called, has the usual array of Eee-style ports: Ethernet, audio and USB. But it also boasts and HDMI connector and Altec Lansing speakers.
There's a physical switch for the Wi-Fi. It has Bluetooth on board, according to the LED array. The customary SDHC card slot has been moved from the side to the front of the machine - where it was is now what could well be an ExpressCard 34 bay.
There's a fingerprint reader mounted below the touchpad and between the mouse buttons, and that plus the N10's styling - it's a sexy looking beast - indicate Asus hopes to attract a higher class of user than it's been punting the Eee series at.
Not that it'll be charging a lot for it: maybe as little as NT$15,000 and NT$20,000 ($477-636/£256-342/€323-430).
For that you get a machine based around Intel's Atom, equipped with a glossy 10.2in, 1024 x 600 display, Windows Vista, and up to 320GB of hard drive storage.
Related Reviews
Acer Aspire One A110
MSI Wind
Asus Eee PC 901
Vye mini-v S37B
Asus Eee PC 900
COMMENTS
3G we want 3G
When will they put a 3G interface on these babies?
"Rock Solid. Heart Touching."
You what? What the hell does that even mean? The only things I can think of that are both rock solid and heart touching are either bullets or tungsten-edged scalpels.
Nice Laptop but why Vista
Hi Guys, nice looking machine, I would rather have Linux and a SSD in there maybe that will happen when the intel SSD's are out later this year. Also to heystoopid, I wouldn't hold out much hope for Win 7, its based on the Vista Kernel and theres nothing to prove that MS has learned its lesson at all.
Steve.
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/08/14/welcome.aspx#comments
Paris, because she thinks Penguins are cute, and everyone should have one.
I keeping trying these netbooks but keep coming back to my M100
The best all rounder pc laptop ever made and I know it will sound like a sales plug but hey they don't make them any more is an (well upgraded) Toshiba Portege M100, preferably the 1.3/1.4Ghz with the Centrino Ultra low voltage (ULV) Processor. It has a real screen 12.1'' 1024x768 (4x3 Aspect Ratio), built in DVD-RW which I added Sony NEC Optiarc AD-7633A slot loading drive (NEC provide the software to change to cable select/Master/Slave), an Hitachi 5k160 (160GB) Hard disk and 2GB of PC2700 Ram.
Its damn robust - (metal alloy casing) I've pulled it off my desk at least twice, still working fine.
Its biggest 'marketing failure' was the mouse pointer rather than pad, but I find the pointer quicker (less movement of the hands if your touch typng)
Note they did a 1.2Ghz version, but this only had 802.11a rather than 54Mb/s 802.11g on the 1.3/1.4 Models.
People still comment on what a smart little laptop it is - it also has sd card slot, bluetooth, proper wheel volume control, external wireless switch, infra-red, usb 2.0, ext vga, Network, built in modem (sadly not a broadband modem), PCMCIA/PC Card slot.
It never gets hot, and the fan is whisper quiet and very rarely on. XP works a treat on it.
And of course
And of course if it had a nice sexy alloy case and powered by the more energy efficient but faster AMD CPU up coming chip due to be released in November '08 just in time for the primaries , it would make a nice replacement for the old turn of the century P3 Portege that be for sure , forget the Vista crap though as Windows 7 sounds a lot sexier !
