Asus unwraps 10in Eee with 9.5-hour battery life
Intel's new N280 CPU too
Asus has introduced its latest Eee PC, a 10in model that will incorporate the latest Atom CPU - the N280 - and a nine-and-a-half hour runtime.
Asus' Eee PC 1000HE: shades of Aspire One?
The battery life is Asus' claim, of course, and numbers quoted by vendors are rarely achieved in real-world usage. Asus said the Eee 1000HE has a six-cell battery, but didn't specify its capacity.
Stock netbook portage
The N280 runs at 1.67GHz, up from the N270's 1.6GHz, and the machine's 1GB memory will be clocked at 667MHz rather than 533MHz. That's thanks to an improved chipset: Intel's GN40, which also bring HD-capable graphics, though at what cost to battery life remains to be seen.
Other specs are largely Small, Cheap Computer standard: 10in, 1024 x 600 screen; three USB ports; SDHC card slot; VGA port; and 10/100Mb/s Ethernet, plus 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It comes with a 160GB hard drive and a Sony/Apple-style lozenge keyboard.
Now with a lozenge-style keyboard
The only versions of the machine currently listed are down as Windows XP boxes. There's no word on Linux versions.
Due to be made available in a choice of glossy blue and black cases - shades of Aspire One? - the Eee 1000HE will cost $400 (£280/€311) when it ships in the US. European availability and pricing has yet to be released. ®
More Eee PC Reviews...
S101 |
1000 |
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N10 |
COMMENTS
Here we go
Some of you are forgetting that the netbooks were not intended to watch movies, work with Flash development or whatever. It was made for surfing, Emailing and lught applications.
Notebook review said in their editor's choice review that at typical usage, the 1000HE can last a bit over 7 hours - about 3.5 hours or so longer that The Register's choice Samsing NC10.
For those who think there won't ve a Linux edition, there is always:
gdisk 1 /del /all /y
[or Linux equivalent]
So we're all agreed then...
Practically all of El Reg’s reader base (AKA The Geekdom) would prefer a /*insert your own preference here*/ version of Linux.
Now for the remaining 99% of the world’s population. They just would not give a rat’s big hairy pimpled ass! They want something that they know about, and that looks like that screen there that they see every day in their office, using the computer to be productive in their chosen career. Hmmm. I wonder which group big business would cater for?
FLAME ON!
@Stuart Halliday
The One already has an LED backlight: http://www.acer.com/aspireone/.
And the pixel dimensions are already 30% smaller than my BenQ 24 inch widescreen monitor (133 pixels per inch on the Acer, versus 94 on the BenQ, unless my arithmetic is faulty of course).
Smaller pixels are of course better than larger but much smaller and most people won't see the difference. Especially as it turns out that the people buying them are not the kids that the marketing people thought would buy them.
Surely if we want much more screen performance out of small cheap computers we should drop the screen altogether and use virtual reality goggles.
Tux because my One runs Linux (Easy Peasy/Ubuntu 8.10, Netbook Remix).
Wait for the Next Generation
The main 2 reasons why none of these manufactures offer screens above 1024x600 is :
1. It's a major expensive for them as the LCD screens need to be specially made.
2. More pixels means more power consumed and higher CPU usage.
We'll need to wait until they run out of stock of the old screens and decide to build one with a decent amount of vertical resolution and LED backlight.
Umm
Isn't the reason no Linux version has been announced so that they can just quote one battery life figure, rather than "Windows with 9.5 hour battery life, Linux with 7" or whatever?
I think the problem is that Asus has realised everyone hates Xandros, and they're just waiting for their contract with them to run out so they can stick a distro that isn't quite so reviled on there. All the people whining about how they want a linux version are just going to install their own distro over the stock Xandros anyway, so why does it even matter?
