Asus $199 MeeGo netbook out next month
Eee PC 701 successor at last?
Asus announced its MeeGo-based netbook, the 10in Eee PC X101, earlier this month, but said little else about the specs. Now a few tech details have emerged.
The X101 - due out next month, apparently - will be based on Intel's Atom N435, the chip giant's new, single-core CPU running at 1.33GHz.
It'll have an 8GB SSD, expandable using Micro SD cards; 2GB of memory; 2.4GHz 802.11n and Bluetooth; and a pair of USB 2.0 slots.
Don't expect much in the way of battery life: the X101 will come with a three-cell power pack.
Low storage capacity and low battery capacity make for a low price: the Eee PC X101 will retail for around $199 (£125), says DigiTimes. ®
COMMENTS
Full circle?
Isn't this how netbooks started in the first place? Minimalist feature set & tiny price?
Reminds me of the VW polo...it kept growing and growing in size and price....until the Lupo came along which was the same size/spec as the original polo. And now that's gone, we now have the fox...which even looks like the original Polo.
So...full circle.
MeeGo
The public release version is pretty grim in my opinion, having tried it for about a day before giving it up as a bad deal even for free. Poor use of screen space, clunky task switching, limited add-on hardware compatibility and configurability (get your 3G APN details wrong, and kiss goodbye to ever getting it working) etc. Hopefully ASUS have managed to smooth over some of these wrinkles, otherwise it'll be as much of a flash in the pan as other netbook Linuxes from a retail point of view - the cynic in me would suggest it's being set up for a fall, why use Windows-friendly hardware otherwise?
By George, I think they've got it...
Speaking as a current owner of an Eee 701SD (which is still running nicely on Eeebuntu, at least until that OS' successor (Aurora) is ready), I like what I'm seeing here.
I don't know how I'd find MeeGo, so I'd reserve the right to try an existing 701-tweaked Linux with it. Certainly wouldn't be put off by an 8Gb SSD (my 701 has that) - yes, this looks rather interesting...
